#some post endgame foolishness for you

[samcky]

haircut!! <3

Hii! thank you for the ask my love ❤️

Haircut

-

When the dust settles and everything is where it's supposed to be, stones back in their timelines and Steve with the love of his life, Sam and Bucky have nowhere else to go but a small apartment that Steve left for them in Brooklyn.

Sam hasn't even had the chance to put the shield down when Bucky crowds him in the hallway and gruffly tells him that he needs a favor

"if you give me your arm and ask me to be the next winter soldier I'm gonna quit" Sam tells him, propping the shield against the shoe rack and sliding away from Bucky. He needs a drink

"Fuck you" Bucky says without any heat behind it, but Sam can almost hear an eye-roll in his voice "I need you to cut my hair" Sam turns around at that, raising an eyebrow at him. "Don't make a big deal out of it"

"Go to a professional, man, I'm not a hairdresser" Sam tells him, reaching for a can of beer that Steve used to love.

"No shit" Bucky says, leaning awkwardly against the wall and staring at Sam. Sam wonders if this staring is gonna be a constant thing, because it's freaking him out a little, it's been a long day. "But I need you to do it"

"Why?"

"Can you just do it and not make a big deal out of it?" Bucky almost begs at this point, sounding whiny and annoyed. Sam doesn't think Bucky knows how to ask for favors.

"Fine, okay" Sam raises his hands. He opens the kitchen drawer and starts looking for scissors, he's pretty sure Steve doesn't own shears. "but if it looks shit, that's not on me"

"it already looks this like shit, just do it" Bucky says and walks to the window, dragging a dingy dining chair with him and sitting where the light shines the brightest. Sam would beg to differ, he actually like Bucky's hair like this, it's one of his very few redeeming qualities.

When he finds the scissors, mirror, and hairbrush he joins Bucky by the window, standing beside him, and takes a deep breath. Bucky's hair is down and pushed behind his ears, Sam reaches with both hands and untucks his hair, making it fall over his face, and starts brushing it. Once he's done brushing he puts Bucky's hair in a ponytail and chops it off.

It looks silly like this, funny almost, if Sam were evil he would leave Bucky like this, but he picks the scissors back up and starts working on trimming the ends. Sam runs his hand in Bucky's hair to tug on the section he wants to cut and that's when he stops suddenly, he feels the circular ridges on the side of Bucky's head. Protruding roughly against his skull. it takes his brain only a second to remember the images of the winter soldier in the chair, with a crown of black and silver over him, electroshock - his mind supplies.

"that's-" he stars, fingers gently resting against the scars

"I said don't make a big deal out of it" Bucky interrupts him and Sam finally gets why Bucky didn't want anyone else touching his head. It makes him feel weird, almost soft, the amount of trust he has been shown today almost makes him break down and do something like, hug Bucky or whatever.

"Okay, okay" Sam reassures him "keep your head still," he says and starts cutting the rest of his hair. He doesn't speak after that, and neither does Bucky, but his clenched hands and shallow breathing doesn't escape Sam.

Sam tries not to make a big deal out of it but, god, there's nothing he wants more right now than to turn Bucky around and kiss his head so many times that Bucky remembers nothing but how good it feels to be loved like that.

Sam doesn't even bother pretending that this is not what he wants, he's wanted him, god, five years ago? even if it's only been days for him, and he wants him now. That somewhere between watching Bucky through Steve's screen and their occasional visits to Wakanda he started feeling so much for this man that the evidence of pain on his skin almost makes Sam cry.

"I'm going home tomorrow, to Louisiana" Sam says loudly in the silence of the room, making Bucky open his eyes.

"oh? okay" Bucky almost whispers, not daring to move his head.

"It's very sunny there" Sam continues, cutting the hair on the back of Bucky's neck. He hesitates for a second, then throws the caution out of the window, he just came back to life, if there was ever time to take risks it's now "you should come with me"

"Oh" Bucky says again, louder this time. Sam can feel his jaw twitch under his hand.

"Yeah, some sun might do you some good" Sam shrugs "We don't have a guest bedroom, but you can sleep on the couch, or, uh, we can set you up in my room, I have a big bed" Sam finishes. He thanks god that Bucky's sitting with his back to him, because the blush on Sam's cheeks burns so bright it's embarrassing.

Bucky doesn't say anything and Sam does the best he can not to freak out. He keeps cutting over the same pieces of hair as he wait for Bucky to speak.

"I don't like couches" Bucky says after what feels like an hour, quiet and almost shy. Sam lets out a heavy breath, a big smile spreading itself on his lips without his permission.

"I can work with that" Sam says and even with someone elses shield sitting in the hallway and five years missing from his life, Sam finally feels that things might actually be okay

-

also this is the haircut Sam give him, bc i said so

[eddiediazismyhusband]

This is what gets me when people write in depth analysis about how dumb they would be to not go there with queer Eddie and with Buddie. Like yes, I agree it would be incredibly stupid and bad writing - unfortunately as much as I want that to reassure me(and I’ll admit some days when I’m sad and need to not be I pretend to let it), it doesn’t. Just because it would be stupid and bad writing doesn’t mean they won’t do it. We’ve seen this show repeatedly make bad writing choices before. I’ve watched TV shows time and time again screw things up in the eleventh hour, I’ve seen so many shows set things up and then take a hard left turn into the dumbest plots in existence. And they get backlash for it but still do it. So as much as I want to believe that because logic and basic literary analysis says Eddie is queer and Buck and Eddie are each others’ best match - that isn’t a guarantee of anything. I’m also preparing myself that if we actually do get a queer Eddie storyline and buddie canon - there is a high possibility that they stumble through it in a ridiculous and poorly written way. I want more than anything for that not to be true but it is still a very distinct possibility.

this is exactly my feelings- like one of my biggest pet peeves are people making posts as if buddie is 10000% happening and there is absolutely zero possibility of it not going that way which i’m sorry to be a debbie downer once again but that’s just not true

what kills me is everyone in the fandom keeps talking about “it’d be so ooc for _______”, seemingly forgetting the fact that s7 was ooc for so many of the main characters to the point that we were all ragging on the writers about it… like if they were able to write a season so sloppy and terribly ooc what makes you think they won’t continue to do so, especially after tim just said “i don’t like to plan out seasons”

ooc writing happens in tv shows all the time. just because something wouldn’t make sense for a character/plotline doesn’t mean they won’t just do it anyway. like I’ve said before, tim has shown us that he only cares about shock value and drama- telling us himself in a interview that “i can’t just let them be happy, then no one would watch” (which is such total bullshit but this is the man who decided to make eddie have an emotional affair with a doppelgänger of his dead wife rather than just, yk, confirm his queerness)

i get it. it’s disappointing. you don’t want your favorite shows/characters to tank and go off the rails. but unfortunately, it has happened time and time and time again in network tv, and 9-1-1 is not immune to this.

i fully agree with the posts and analyses that detail how the show has set up buddie being the only satisfactory endgame relationship between them, and how it would be foolish and bad writing for them not to, but unfortunately (as you said in your ask) this show has made god awful writing choices frequently (literally the entirety of s7 is proof of that) and they have jumped through hoops to avoid buddie canon countless times— there is nothing stopping them from doing it again.

and this idea that just because they’re talking about buddie openly must mean they’re going canon is ridiculous. the short is reaching the end if it’s run; if it even gets renewed past s8, it’s very unlikely that they’ll go past s10 at the longest. they just moved to a new network, baited the fuck out of buddie pre-s7 and then didn’t give us anything and people are still watching. they know that as long as people think there’s a possibility of buddie canon that they’ll watch the show— it’s textbook queer/shipbaiting. 9-1-1 is not immune to this just because they’ve said “we don’t want to be accused of queerbaiting” in the past. we’ve reached a point where the network queerbaiting won’t cause enough backlash to warrant them being cautious anymore. it’s a dick move, yeah, but these creators are in this job for one thing: money. they have proven they don’t actually give a fuck about meaningful storytelling. it’s why they rely on cheap drama and shock value to get by bc they know people will tune in anyway.

i completely understand wanting to be hopeful and optimistic. i will forever be hopeful for the day that buddie finally go canon (although i hope they ditch the mustache before then because i don’t want to think of my alcoholic uncle when i see eddie kiss buck for the first time) and when it does i will be so fucking happy after waiting for 6 years.

but that’s the thing. i have waited for 6 years. i’m tired of getting my hopes up each season bc “guys this is literally the closest we’ve ever been there is no way they aren’t going to go there now” just to get slapped in the face by the showrunners and writers. i’m not going to get my hopes up about it just to be let the fuck down once again. and frankly, i don’t wanna see the fallout when we are let down again because people decided to convince themselves that it was 100% for sure set in stone happening when in reality it’s really not.

[slashersgostabbystabstab]

Hold

I took a break from writing Xenomorph stuff and decided to play some DBD. To my surprise, I encountered a Singularity who (thanks to my username Singularity Plz <3 ) sacrificed everybody except me. Even wished me a Happy Birthday in endgame chat. It delighted me so much I couldn't stop smiling, so I wrote a fast and crappy fic but was too sleepy to actually post it.

It was written super fast under the influence of complete elation so as I said, it's no doubt crappy like literally there is no editing lol. I'll pump out better fics when I actually sit down and give myself a decent amount of time ^^

Reminder that short fics for Seven and Hux are always open!

Words: 1618

Out of all the killers you could have picked as your partner, you just had to go and choose the one that was guaranteed to give you little to no affection. Emphasis on the “no” part of that phrase. He was sure to never give you a sweet nor ardent kiss, let alone hug you properly with the limbs he constructed onto his body. Hell, he would never provide any comforting words if he miraculously tried to. It just wasn’t in his programming nor newfound awareness to show any sort of sentiment. 

But even with chances as low as yours, you really did try for his affections no matter how much of a beggar it made you seem. Thankfully nobody else was ever aware of your foolish advances. 

And foolish was how somebody may have referred to you as if they had become witness to the sight involving you and the egotistical robot you called your partner. While his grappling claw fiddled with the various buttons on the panel belonging to the cloning hub, you were seated beside him with eyes glued on his form. As you gave him your most intent stare that explored every region of his anatomy, Hux stood almost completely still with what could be considered an equally fixated stare. And he never once paid any mind to you. 

Hux never took notice of the way you watched him struggle with the machine’s panel, only being aware that your presence was in his own. If anything he made sure to push your attendance to the back of his CPU; at least that was what his inner voice tried to convince him on. And you could admittedly say that you didn’t mind it one bit, this being one of those moments where being with him was almost sufficient. 

Nonetheless you remained sitting on your crate with your eyes never tearing away from him. From the entirety that was his self-made, perfect body. A smile was present on your features whilst your chin lay on the palm of your hand that was supported by the other arm that was crossed. With how lovingly you gazed at the murderous machine, you once again thanked the Entity that no killer was in your radius to see this. Let alone a fellow survivor. 

Let alone Hux’s surveillance. 

Had the word foolish been in his vocabulary and had he been paying attention to you, you were sure he would have voiced his opinion on your pathetic ogling. But alas, he somehow did not have his eyes everywhere and did not once realize that you had now inched closer towards his figure. 

You unfolded your arms to instead place them on your lap, smile widening just a tad bit more before you took another few inches off the distance between you and him. With this new proximity you took the opportunity to glance down at his modular hook that dug into the metallic flooring of the colony ship. The robot always stood in the same exact spot every time he worked on the cloning hub, having caused a dent in the ground only visible when his hook moved from said location. 

Your eyes followed up the sharp weapon ever so slowly to admire every bit of rust, and dried blood, that coated it. Not paying much mind to those bits of his claw, your eyes resumed their trail to the rest of his limb that entangled his flesh around the machinery. Seeing as Hux still disregarded you despite your intense observing, you cleared your throat loud enough to call out to him. But the only thing to come from Hux was the whirring sounds of his machine parts moving, signaling that he had not gone into sleep mode. Meaning he intentionally was keeping his attention on the cloning hub’s screen. 

You gave another clear of your throat with a slightly faltered smile, but in no way did your sense of determination fluctuate. So you subsequently removed your hands from your lap to lift yourself off of the crate, spinning around until you were facing in the same direction as Hux. Even then he only moved his claw that continued to do Entity knows what on the hub’s panel. 

Having spun your body around, you scoot even closer towards Hux with your right hand placed on your side. And although your left one mimicked the other, this one instead slid over the crate’s surface in an inconspicuous manner. 

Finally you turned away from Hux, but you did so in a playfully unknowing way as though you never took notice of what you were doing and instead stared at the hub’s screen. Once your hand reached the edge of the crate and began to hover in the air, your fingers cautiously reached out to where you knew Hux’s claw was positioned. 

Still watching the cloning hub, your fingers bit by bit stuck together before clasping onto the hook’s back side. Perhaps not the smartest decision, but it was the only comfortable way of holding the claw without it being awkward. More awkward than it already was, at least. 

The corners of your lips shot upwards at the contact while you still looked away from Hux, even when he instantly shot a look in your direction due to somehow having felt the hold on his hook.

“What are you doing?”

At long last you returned your gaze to his form, taking your time before your eyes met with his visor’s lights.

“What was that?”

“What are you doing?” Hux repeated, never once moving a single inch. 

“I’m just sitting here.” you gave a shrug before turning away with a tightened grip on his claw. “What are you doing?”

Just like moments earlier, you were met with a deafening silence that prompted you to look back at him with your same smile. Hux, despite the lack of emotions, gave you a stare that pierced right into your soul. Or it would have if you had been any other being that didn’t know him. 

“What?” you chuckled with a new grin before your eyes fell on your hand holding his claw. “Oh! Is that bothering you?”

“Yes.”

Hux’s immediate response had honestly caught you off guard, smiling face gone and instead replaced with wide eyes that looked at the ship’s wall with lightning speed. Your hand released Hux’s claw with the same speed before your hands were returned to your lap in a shame the robot was not aware of. Crazy how a robot could mortify you like that. 

“Sorry.” you mumbled with a clear of your throat, all confidence having flown out the window. “I’ll make sure not to do that again.”

“Why not?”

Now your eyebrows furrowed at Hux’s new question, making you turn to him with a blink of your perplexed eyes. 

“You just said-”

“Your directive never was to stop.” 

For a robot, he gave really confusing signals. He claimed the holding bothered him, but here he is saying he doesn’t want it to stop. Was he lying? Was he even capable of lying?

Nevertheless you gave a sigh, not sure if it was due to a newfound consolation, before your smile returned to your face. With this new relief in you, you reached your hand out to Hux and took hold of his modular claw once more. 

“This treatment is infernal.”

“Huxlee, I don’t even know what you want at this point.” You removed your hand from him again much to his disliking, causing him to finally turn his entire body to face you with his usual stare. At this, you crossed your arms with your smile remaining visible. “You want me to let you go, you don’t want me to let you go. And then you never give me a straight answer. Just how am I supposed to keep you happy?”

“I am not capable of feeling human emotion.”

“I know that.” you chuckled. “But I also know you won’t tell me to back off after this,”

No matter how many mixed signals he gave you, this was one thing you didn’t need any indication for. After standing up to meet Hux’s eyes, you took hold of his head before planting a quick kiss on the middle of his visor. And he, like many other times, remained still while his CPU recalculated just what had happened. 

“Holding…is acceptable.” Rang out his words from his voice box, making you grin at his sudden change of words. “Do not touch the modular claw.”

Was this another mixed signal, or a sort of threat?

“Human flesh is too feeble for a weapon such as that one.”

No, it was a warning. His way of looking out for you, even if it didn’t sound like it. 

“Then what can I hold?” you tilted your head to the side before Hux mimicked your action. However, his head snapped down soon after before you followed his gaze that landed on his projectile claw. And to your surprise, he lifted it and reached out to you rather than expect you to take the limb yourself. 

Your smile returned once more before you accepted his claw and met him halfway, holding his metallic fingers which gingerly curled around your own. With each of you now facing each other, you grinned up at the robot with a giggle before speaking again. 

“Are we just going to stand here holding…hands?” you blinked with a bit of a laugh, Hux merely snapping his head back in your direction. “Or…should we go out for a walk?”

“Strolling not necessary.”

Okay…guess standing in place was what it would be until he tired of it. Which, as much as he claimed to find your affections annoying, you learned would take a good minute to happen. It was just another one of his many ways of keeping you all to himself. 

You couldn’t help but laugh and shrug the strange positioning off, not like you hadn’t dealt with stranger things throughout this relationship. 

Hm. Maybe you could take things to the next step and try to hug him.

[sawrinwrites]

Sawrin does Bumbleby Week

I know I said I was going to use this month to focus on OC content, but I am a recklessly impulsive dumbass, so when the prompt list for Bumbleby Week went up and I realised I was accidentally completing the prompt for day 1, my brain went “Welp! Might as well do all 8!” and I agreed.

Some of these are based on concepts I've already been developing for future multi-chapter fics. I've marked those ones with a * by the title so you guys can let me know which ones you want to see the most.

Here’s what you can expect to see over the next 8 days:

Day 1 - Bumblebaby

Title: Expecting

Summary: A new story in the As Told By Ember collection. This tale follows the best girl as she helps her humans prepare for the arrival of their first child.

Author’s Comment: You can thank @reeves3 for this one. Without their suggestion, I wouldn’t have had the inspiration to build out a collection of Ember’s adventures.

Day 2 – Jock & Nerd AU

Title: I See You*

Summary: Weiss knows Blake and Yang are in love, she just hasn’t figured out a way to get them together yet. When Blake accidentally submits the wrong poem to her class and Yang ends up writing an essay on it, Weiss finally finds the opening she’s been waiting for.

Author’s Comment: This fit the prompt better when it was from Yang and Blake’s POV, but the story worked better from Weiss’ so that's what I wrote. Bees trauma-bonding through literature (a concept that is very near and dear to my heart).

Day 3 – Soulmates / Reincarnation

Title: And Every Time I’ll Find You

Summary: As another one of Blake’s lives draw to a close, she and Yang return to the place where it all began.

Author’s Comment: My beta reader banned me from writing soulmate stories because of this. It’s a sad one.

Day 4 – Nomad Blake & Farm Girl Yang

Title: Maybe This Year

Summary: The Kuo Kuana dragon riders make their annual visit to the floating island of Patch. For most, it’s a chance to relax. For Blake, it’s a chance to reunite with Yang and wonder how many more times she’s going to be able to leave.

Author’s Comment: Pretty sure the last time I wrote about dragons was when the years still had 00 in the middle of them. My inner child had a field day with this one. A more fun and light fic than the summary might suggest.

Day 5 – Evil Yang / Blake (or both)

Title: A Weak and Foolish Heart*

Summary: Sequestered to a keep in the middle of the Vacuo desert, the blood mage Blake leverages her skills and her history with Yang to try and ascertain the location of Princess Weiss Schnee.

Author’s Comment: This one’s the reason why each day is getting posted as a new piece of work instead of chapters under one project. Tags for blood, gore, graphic violence, and depictions of torture. I spent hours researching tendon names and positions for this. It’s also the fic that most closely resembles my preferred writing style (make of that fact what you will).

Day 6 – Comfort

Title: The Way It Feels*

Summary: Blake and Yang attempt to be intimate for the first time since Yang’s accident but the loss of sensations in Yang’s arm triggers a panic attack instead. Blake comforts her wife in the aftermath.

Author’s Comment: I’m sorry, it wouldn’t be a Sawrin fic without angst before the comfort.

Day 7 – AU Day

Title: Double Date*

Summary: After Weiss accidentally accepts an invitation to be the third wheel at a dinner date with Pyrrha and her girlfriend, Yang, she begs her best friend, Blake, to join as her fake girlfriend. An easy ask, if Blake didn’t find herself attracted to the blonde on the other side of the table.

Author’s Comment: I was going to put up a vote on which AU to do but the second I added “Fake Dating” to the list my brain went “What if the Bees weren’t the ones who were fake dating?” So here you go, fake dating monochrome with (assumed) Greek fire. Bees & Schneekos endgame. Also an excuse for me finally write Blake into that dress.

Day 8 – Bonus / VA Appreciate Day

Title: Downtime

Summary: Blake and Yang discuss the lives of their VAs, as well as their own budding relationship.

Author’s Comment: The shortest one of the lot, this is really just a small love letter to the Bees and to Barb and Arryn.

I'll be posting a link to each fic under the Bumbleby Week tag as they go live.

[themadauthorshatter]

... I'm not apologizing at all😆

Recently, I've been checking back in with Welcome Home and have had my fancy caught buy an AU called Greyscale Wally AU by the superbly talented @sweetest-honeybee (I highly recommend it, it's AWESOME) and got this idea after seeing some spoilery endgame stuff that was posted

This will contain some spoilers for the AU, so you might want to check that out first before reading this, and this is purely speculation based off of what I've seen

This doesn't really have a title, but Trigger warnings/content warnings for abuse, manipulation, swearing, and humanoid Home being mean and scary

With that out of the way, ENJOY!

Sleeping was steadily becoming something that Wally was familiar with, along with the feeling of nearly unbearable discomfort in his entire body that rarely faded. The only real time it left was when he slept, thanfully.

But he also dreamed when he slept, and he resented it with every fiber of his being.

Each night, he would be haunted by a horrible visage of one of his friends shouting at him, hurting him, turning on him as if he had caused the desaturating plague that slowly, seemingly spread to the neighbors.

It had gotten to Barnaby, at least.

And Home won't tell me why.

Wally burrowed deeper into his blankets, letting sleep overtake him.

And he saw Barnaby and Sally, their colors muted and their demeanors drained and skittish.

Barnaby seemed more agitated than fearful, but kept his eyes averted.

A hand clapped onto Wally's shoulder, covering it entirely as a shadow loomed over him.

"What's the matter, Darling?" Home asked, speaking clearly rather than using the creaks and clatters Wally was used to. "Aren't you happy to see your friends?"

Words failed Wally in that moment, even when he craned his head up and saw Home.

Or, at least, some twisted visage of Home that had a face, one that was... rubbery as it moved, being stuff and movable all at once with enough edges and shapes making up his face to make Wally's head spin.

It would have been better to see Home as a body with Home The House on its shoulders.

But Home doesn't love you. He hurt you, remember?

"You're not," Home surmised, his tone light, but disappointed. "Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? Ungrateful as you are, you're never satisfied with anything I do for you."

Wally stumbled back as his eyes locked on Home's, Home towering over him.

He also managed to find his voice.

"I.. I'm not," he quivered. "Why should I be? You hurt them."

Home followed him, easily keeping up with long legs and an even stride. "I wouldn't have had to, if it weren't for you."

Wally cringed and flattened his hands against the sides of his head; foolish as it was, he couldn't stand hearing the careless tone Home used to say horrible things. "I didn't do anything!"

"But you did."

Home held Wally's hands on one of his own and caught Wally by the jaw, forcing the smaller of the two to meet his now dark eyes.

Wally pulled and twisted to try and break free, but Home shook him, adjusting his grip to grab Wally just under his cheekbones, nearly crushing Wally's face.

"And you just can't learn your lesson."

Wally whimpered when Home pulled him close and snarled loud enough to make Wally kick at the ground to get away.

"You have all of this because of me, you miserable mound of cotton!"

Home all but threw Wally into a turn, wrapping his arms around him, one trapping Wally's arms at his sides as he grabbed a fistful of blue hair.

Wally yelped at the sharp tug at his head, but it quickly numbed when he saw Barnaby and Sally, both with their mouths stitched shut as they gazed brokenly back at him.

Black fluid-like tendrils crept up and around their bodies, and both of them withered the further it climbed.

It wasn't like the discomfort he'd grown used to.

Instead, it hurt.

"Stop it," Wally begged, his voice quiet.

"I didn't want to do this, Darling," Home said ruefully, too close for Wally to bear. "But you left me with no other choice."

The inky black covered both Barnaby and Sally completely and shrank into the ground, then flattened against it.

He killed them.

A burning grew in Wally's eyes, one followed by a trailing dampness that ran down his face.

He killed them. They're my friends! He killed them, but they didn't do anything!

"I can always remake them," Home remarked, "it'd be easy."

He moved closer, forcing his poisonous words to drown out Wally's rampaging thoughts.

"But that means it would all happen again, if you keep being disobedient."

"Please," Wally sobbed, grasping onto Home's arm in order to stay standing. "Please, Home, stop it."

The harsh grasp on his hair turned gentle, long fingers with sharp nails combing through blue threads.

"Have you learned your lesson?"

Wally only cried harder, burying his face into Home's upper arm. "What did I do, Home!? Just tell me!"

The hand in his hair lowered to his back, rubbing circles and occasionally patting Wally's shoulder.

"None of this would have happened, if you'd just listened to me," Home mused. "All of this can go away, Darling, and all you have to do is accept that what you did was wrong."

A tugging at his ankles caught his attention, and a scream ripped through Wally as the black tendrils climbed up his legs.

"Home, stop! Please, Home, make it stop!"

The corner of Home's mouth curled upward before falling once more, his arms loosening as he stood and stepped away from Wally.

"I want you to apologize," Home said sternly. "And I want you to accept that you wronged me. If you can do that, I'll let you come back, I'll take all the pain away, from you and anyone else I gave it to, and everything will be the way it was before."

The tendrils continued to rise, trapping Wally's hands and dragging him into the ground.

"But I don't know what I did!" Wally shouted as he thrashed and clawed to keep himself above the ground. "What did I do to make you do this!?"

Home smirked and crouched down as Wally was dragged further down, cupping his face with one large, clawed hand.

"Think about it, Darling."

The tendrils wrapped around Wally's mouth and eyes, silencing his screams, but also intensifying them.

He only knew how intense they were when he opened his eyes and saw Frank and Eddie over him, both shaken and wide eyed, but overly relieved to see he'd awoken.

Even if they'd done it in the dead of the night.

"Easy, bud," Eddie murmured as Wally shakily sat up. "Just us. Just came to check on you."

Wally hugged his knees to his chest, eyes brimming with tears.

Frank lightly placed a hand on Wally's forearm. "You wanna talk about it?"

Wally only lunged and threw his arms around Frank's torso, and Frank carefully hugged him back.

"It's okay," Frank soothed him. "You're gonna be okay."

Wally barely heard him, not with two raging and terrifying thoughts tearing through his mind.

I hate this.

I hate Home.

[markantonys]

amol chapters 21-36, though once again contains major spoilers for character endgame fates that still haven’t happened yet as of chapter 36

so asha’man can compel aes sedai with the bond but aes sedai can’t compel asha’man? that’s rancid

“she also wanted to be done with the black tower” mood!

my man demandred shows up with the sharans, being very sexy as always. don’t lie, we all have our FILF (forsaken i’d like to fuck) demandred is mine 100%. i love an evil man with a weird nose and an antagonistic homoerotic obsession with the hero (see: francesco pazzi in i medici season 2). i hope he doesn’t get cut from the show and instead absorbs some of the less sexy forsaken’s plotlines so that he can have something to do prior to the final season lmao

he’s acting like a jilted ex by claiming that he has “crawled through the depths of sorrow and risen up to accept my glory,” asking people if they know anything about rand, saying that leane is beautiful but he doesn’t give a shit because he just wants her to deliver a message to rand. “tell him i will finally have satisfaction.” literally the gayest possible way you could’ve phrased that my dude

“i will slaughter and destroy. i will seize his people. i will enslave his children, i will take his women for my own. one by one, i will break, destroy, or dominate everything he has loved. the only way for him to avoid this is for him to come and face me.” somebody is not taking his recent breakup well! his recent 3000-years-ago breakup. on a more serious note, exhibit fucking A of how stupid it was for bashere to make elayne publicize that rand is the babies’ dad!

i’m laughing about all these gay dramatics because rand is literally about to go face the dark one, he does NOT have time for your shit demandred. he’s gonna hear this message and be like “oh my god why are you so obsessed with me” and then continue on to shayol ghul. the dark one is gonna be facepalming that demandred’s gay dramatics are trying to get in the way of his faceoff with rand.

previously we’ve discussed that demandred is mat’s foil, but he’s also gawyn’s foil: homoerotic obsession with rand that consumes their every waking thought meanwhile rand never thinks about them and has no idea they’re obsessed with him. but gawyn was able to get over his onesided breakup and find closure where demandred couldn’t. although rand DID have that angsty gay thought about how maybe demandred wouldn’t have turned to the shadow if rand/LTT had loved him instead of competed with him, so not quite as onesided as gawyn. we’ve also previously discussed mat and gawyn foiling each other (young extremely skilled military men thrust into leadership positions they didn’t want, wary of being used by aes sedai, complicated relationships with rand), so this is just a nice trio of foils here.

in conclusion, demandred and LTT are that post that’s like “characters that never dated but are definitely exes now”

when perrin vanishes graendal’s balefire in TAR: “the woman started. they always did that. didn’t they realize that nothing was real here except what you thought to be real?” i’m so sick of perrin reading 1 wikipedia article on TAR and then acting like he knows it better than women who’ve been studying it for years (he also kinda did this with the wise ones when they tried to warn him against going in the flesh and then once he did so he was like “this doesn’t feel evil, they’re wrong about that”)

“a warrior who will not strike a maiden is a warrior who refuses her honor.” king gaul!!! and we have quite a bit of both gaul and lanfear shaming perrin for Not Killing Women and perrin himself acknowledging that it was foolish of him not to kill graendal when he had the chance. this combined with lan’s scene in the last chapter chunk, i feel like sanderson is coming down hard on how stupid this rj attitude was lmao bless

lanfear says that graendal was invading bashere’s dreams oh no!!!! what did she do!!!! i’m remembering that min had some kinda Darkness viewing about bashere and biting my nails!!!

well, if bashere is under the influence of the shadow then at least that would explain why he made elayne endanger herself and the babies by making her tell everyone rand is the dad lmao idk if he WAS under the influence of the shadow back at that time, but i’m going to believe he was in order to rationalize that buckwild stupidity.

“[egwene] looked at [gawyn], a cold strength in her eyes, and nodded. light! how could she be so calm when he had to clench his teeth for fear they would start rattling together?” that’s our wife!!

gawyn is using the bloodknife rings oooh sexy

at the shayol ghul group, rand has placed aviendha in charge ❤️❤️ so we could’ve had rand facing off against the dark one, aviendha leading at shayol ghul, elayne leading the armies, and mat maybe helping her lead the armies if he was here instead of ebou dar. power polycule!!!

aviendha sees rand approaching the cavern: “he wore his coat of red and gold, but under it a simple two rivers shirt. what he had become and what he had been, wrapped together in one.” 😭 rand has two swords, callandor and laman’s sword. “he carried that because of her. fool man.” 😭😭 “aviendha raised her hand to him, and he raised his in return. that would be their only farewell if he failed in his task or she died during hers. with a last look, she turned away from him and toward her duty.” 😭😭😭😭😭

randlayne was given priority for a number of chapters, and then in this brief portion avirand got priority - avi is the last one to see rand here, and she’s also the last one who got an on-page Relationship Moment with him (a couple chapters ago when they were standing together after scoping out shayol ghul), not to mention the Romance of her being the one leading the group protecting him outside the cavern. meanwhile min has only exchanged about 3 words with rand in the entire book 😌 fueling my belief that min was just sex while rand was Going Through It and desperate for companionship and she was literally the only one available, but elayne and avi are his endgame. now that the end has come and he’s back with his other loved ones, min has all but vanished from his mind and from the book while elayne and avi are the ones he’s focused on and the ones who have onscreen Relationship Scenes with him. min didn’t even GET an onscreen goodbye with him at all lmao! cadsuane mentioned that rand had given min jewelry as a goodbye gift but we didn’t see the interaction! we love to see it! or not see it, in this case.

we have a battle scene here that i did enjoy because it was wonderful to see avi flexing her leadership AND channeling skills! a perfect culmination of her character arc!

moiraine on the shayol ghul cavern: “this is not the bore, this is not the dark one’s prison.” it’s not? oh. well then...................i don’t know what the bore is and at this point i’m too afraid to ask. (update: later on it’s mentioned how the bore is Outside The Pattern. i would very much enjoy seeing the show adapt this whole pit of doom confrontation because it’s hard for me to visualize so far in this chapter chunk.)

so moiraine and nynaeve will be the 2 women to use callandor with rand. awww i really think one should’ve been egwene since she and rand have been foils and two sides of the same coin and complements and yin and yang and co-protagonists for so long. bummer! i think her instead of nynaeve would’ve had more impact bc it would’ve shown how far rand has come out of his paranoia and self-isolation, if he was doing this with 2 aes sedai he strongly mistrusted for a long time rather than with nynaeve who was always the only one he never mistrusted or pushed away. and in fact it would’ve been such beautiful poetic cinema if callandor only required 1 man and 1 woman and it was just rand and egwene going into the cavern together. haha i was also thinking that egwene would’ve been better than perrin doing all the TAR stuff, so i guess my dream last battle would just be egwene doing EVERY task jkfjg it’s what she deserves!

nynaeve is wearing a beautiful dress because of course women be dressing to the nines to go BATTLE THE DARK ONE

i once saw someone say that the dark one’s all-caps dialogue makes them think of an old person on facebook accidentally writing things in all caps all the time and now that is always what i think of jkfgjh

rand is now entering the cave, so he officially has no time to deal with demandred’s gay dramatics and in fact has never even heard about them. god it would be so funny if demandred gets killed without ever coming face to face with rand in the entire series, that’s HUGE gawyn-onesided-homoerotic-rivalry-with-rand energy!

“an empress had to be crafty, strong, and skilled if she was to survive” and we have never actually seen tuon be any of those things, we’ve only been told that she is, so i guess that means she won’t be long for this world yeah baby!

“matrim would never be a rival...was not the prince of the ravens a check upon the empress, to keep her strong by providing a constant threat?” see, if the ship had been done well, i would be swooning over the romance of tuon being puzzled that for the first time she has a healthy relationship and a family member who won’t try to kill her, but it wasn’t, so instead i’m just like “yeah i WISH mat was a rival and a threat to her” (but i can soothe myself that maybe this is a sign that mat WILL someday be her and the empire’s downfall, and she’s just underestimating him here as usual)

wait shit tuon believes that rand knelt before the crystal throne, and now that i think about it he did do so literally and also kinda did do so metaphorically since he let her walk all over him in arranging their “alliance,” but the dragon kneeling before the crystal throne was a marker of the bad future in avi’s visions..............OH NO

tuon can you stop forcibly renaming mat FOR FIVE MINUTES

mat just says “knotai? i kind of like it” because by this point he has been officially slave-broken and happily accepts his new slave name

but again i can soothe myself that tuon naming him this as “a bringer of destruction” is a sign that someday it’ll backfire on her and he’ll bring destruction to the empire rather than to the empire’s enemies, as she believes here

mat tells tuon that they have to go help egwene’s army and has the audacity to be upset that she seems like she either might not help or might use the opportunity to enslave all the aes sedai. “i never thought the leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces party.

“you gave your word.” “i signed a treaty. any treaty can be broken, particularly by the empress...the empress cannot be constrained by words on a paper.” LMAO wasn’t there a bit in a past book where she insisted that she was so honorable and always kept her promises? LMAOOO and she’s always pressed about the westlanders not keeping their oaths (that they never swore anywhere but in her deranged mind) and whatnot.

me after violating a legal document that i signed: i cannot be constrained by words on a paper 😌

she doesn’t Actually break the treaty yet because she decides it’s in her best interests to help the ~marath’damane army~ so she can use them to defeat the shadow (with the alternative being go back to seanchan right now, solidify her rule, and then come back to fight the shadow with her own forces. because obviously we totally have enough time for that, tuon, it’s not as if the last battle started DAYS ago or anything.) however, this just proves how fucking stupid and pointless the seanchan peace treaty is - tuon does not consider herself bound by it in any way and WILL violate it the SECOND it inconveniences her.

“the clouds had parted above them - they often did when [elayne] was near, one way the bond with rand manifested” ❤️❤️ romance!

just a week or two ago i saw someone shitting on elayne’s pre-battle speech in this book and saying it was lame, but i just read it and it rocks??? fuck off. elayne says “i am supposed to reassure you but i cannot...doing so would remove responsibility...this is not a day for empty promises” and people say it’s lame and not inspiring, but if she HAD hyped the soldiers up more with false positivity then people would’ve said she was being insensitive of the gravity of the situation and treating war as child’s play. there is literally no winning for elayne among Certain Readers.

“birgitte, i am in command, and you are my soldier. you will obey...i’m one of the few channelers of any strength this army has, and i’ll be drawn and quartered before i let myself sit out the fight. i’m easily worth a thousand soldiers on this battlefield.” GO OFF!!!!!!

birgitte tries to protest about the babies, because as we know those are the people she actually cares about and elayne is just a vessel for them in her eyes, and elayne claps back with “even if min hadn’t had that viewing, i’d still insist on fighting. you think the babes of these soldiers aren’t at risk? many of them line the walls of that city! if we fail here, they will be slaughtered. no, i will not keep myself out of danger, and no, i will not sit back and wait. if you think it’s your duty as my warder to stop me, then i will bloody sever this bond right here and now and send you to someone else! i’m not gong to spend the last battle lounging on a chaise and drinking goat’s milk!” YES!!! 👏👏👏👏👏 CHEERING AND PUMPING MY FIST

also, this is another example of there being no winning for elayne among Certain Readers: she does stuff like this and they complain that she’s reckless and gets people killed and Doesn’t Listen To Birgitte, but if she were to spend the last battle lounging on a chaise and drinking goat’s milk they’d complain about her doing nothing and letting everyone else die in her place.

mark my words, lounging on a chaise and drinking goat’s milk is exactly how tuon will spend the last battle. probably min too.

“an odd sensation came to mind. one of the women was in trouble. was it elayne? aviendha? he could not tell.” when rand senses one of his bondholders is in trouble, elayne and aviendha are the only two he cares about 😌 either that or he doesn’t even consider min could be in danger because she’s not doing anything in the battle lmao

moridin arrives. “you could step aside. if my victory is not assured, neither is your fall. let me pass. for once, make the choice you know you should.” “now? now you beg me to return to the light? i have been promised oblivion. finally, nothing, a destruction of my entire being. an end. you will not steal that from me, lews therin! by my grave, you will not!” and they start swordfighting. poor demandred, he wants what ishamael has with rand. demandred and gawyn shaking on the gates yelling “let me in!” whilst rand is too busy in his intense and complicated *and reciprocal* relationships with ishamael and mat.

also, like lanfear, ishamael hovers just on the edge of being a really interesting and complex villain and character, and i hope the show will bring out his motives and psychology more especially through use of AOL flashbacks. it already did a great job establishing “i just want existence to end” as a motive for joining the shadow via dana.

perrin sees the cavern battle from TAR: “two men, locked in battle. two women, as if frozen.” if moiraine and nynaeve spend the entire battle just frozen and not doing anything i’ll be so mad lmao i guess it’s actually good that egwene wasn’t wasted here

perrin and gaul are attacked by aiel male channelers who have been turned to the shadow. this is so interesting, why the hell is it just kind of a 5-page footnote in the final book of the series? why didn’t we get any aiel asha’man? that would’ve been so cool!

“i killed two of those myself, perrin aybara. one could channel. i think myself great with honor, then you slide in and take two captive. bain would laugh herself all the way back to the three-fold land if she saw this.” aw a tidbit of gaul-bain banter/friendship! it should be gaul and bain who are first-siblings rather than bain and chiad. like maybe bain and chiad are already lovers, gaul and chiad start falling for each other, and bain’s resistance is to taking gaul as her first-brother and sharing chiad with him, and then they get a nice little rivals to friends to first-siblings arc. it would’ve made so much more sense! i’m hoping the show will give us mixed gender first-siblings in general (and first-brothers, getting rid of the nonsense that men are worse at being close friends with each other than women are lmao)

“i don’t like fighting beside those seanchan” king gawyn strikes again! and egwene thinks that she “should be fighting the seanchan with every breath, not allying with them. her instincts rebelled as she approached the gathering of seanchan.” i swear to god gawyn and egwene are the only people who still remember that the seanchan suck (and elayne, i believe she was resistant to the idea of allying with them back in the big meeting?)

“egwene’s chances depended on the seanchan joining the battle and engaging the sharan channelers. her stomach twisted...the seanchan damane were not free women; they could not choose to fight. from what she’d seen of the sharan male channelers, they were little more than animals themselves.” queen egwene being the only one to acknowledge this!

“egwene revised her expectations. she’d imagined fortuona as a spoiled adolescent, the product of a coddled lifetime.” no yeah you were right on the money there egwene no revisions needed

egwene absolutely OWNS tuon throughout this conversation and it gives me so much life!!!!!! it is so goddamn satisfying to see someone FINALLY stand up to tuon, given the way she carries a spine-removal kit around (to use @butterflydm​’s extremely apt analogy) for use on literally every single other character who has interacted with her thus far.

now i am going to take a pause simply to record some epic egwene quotes before going back to analysis mode

when tuon says she’d considered whether it would be appropriate for her to speak to egwene with her own voice: “i have considered myself whether it would be appropriate to speak to one such as yourself, who has committed such terrible atrocities.” OOH

when tuon decides oh so generously to see egwene as a queen rather than as a marath’damane for this conversation: “no. you will see me for what i am, woman. i demand it.” OOOH

when tuon agrees and says that she’s spoken to marath’damane before, as it’s allowed for an empress to speak with her pet hounds: “then i will speak with you directly as well. for the amyrlin judges many trials. she must be able to speak to murderers and rapists in order to pass sentence upon them. i think you would be at home in their company, though i suspect they would find you nauseating.” OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH a worthy successor to that epic elaida clapback

“i represent the ultimate proof that your society and empire are built upon falsehoods. here i stand, a woman you insist should be collared for the common good. and yet i display none of the wild or dangerous tendencies that you claim i should have. so long as i am free from your collars, i prove to every man and woman who draws breath that you are a liar.” OOOOOHHH and the other seanchan murmur at this!

there will be more epic quotes coming but now i want to analyze. suffice it to say that this was me throughout this scene:

tuon insists that egwene wouldn’t criticize the collar if she’d known its peace and whatever nauseating shit, and egwene reveals to everybody that she WAS collared and she HATED IT!! tuon is big mad because she didn’t know this so now egwene’s made her look like a fool (and undermined the damane system and her authority) in front of a lot of people.

tuon rounds on mat to demand why he never told her that egwene was collared. he replies, “i didn’t think too much about it. she wasn’t one for very long.” boy i bet egwene wishes SHE was able to not think too much about it! mat has deadass been mooning over the head slaver for all these books with that one time his best friend was enslaved by these people just completely slipping his mind. he also chimes in with an obedient little “may she live forever” when tuon ends a sentence with “the empress” which is sickening.

egwene’s FIRST assumptions when she sees mat among the seanchan are that he’s undercover and they don’t know who he really is or that he’s a captive, that he’s in danger, and that she needs to save him from them. i think this is supposed to be a humorous role reversal of mat thinking these things about egwene being amyrlin when he first arrives in salidar, but it’s absolutely heartbreaking. egwene sees her close friend all buddy-buddy with the people who enslaved her and who have enslaved or murdered countless of her sisters and allies, and she assumes that mat must be there for an ulterior motive or not of his own free will, but nope, he voluntarily threw himself in with them because he was into tuon’s ~mysterious eyes.~ and how can i laugh at egwene ~presumptively~ thinking mat needs a rescue, when he DOES need a rescue before he spends the rest of his life miserable and under tuon’s thumb?

egwene says that their marriage was a result of tuon getting caught up in mat’s ta’veren pull (which tuon denies). “‘being ta’veren never did get me much,’ mat said sourly.” so is he admitting that he doesn’t want this marriage or this life?

tuon is mad at mat for not telling her about egwene’s stint as a damane and says “we will speak of this on another occasion. it will not be pleasant.” and later in the scene when he displeases her, “we will have many words about this tonight” 🚩🚩🚩

“egwene regarded the woman, baffled. light! these people were completely insane.” YES. YES THEY ARE. what a breath of fresh air to see a pov character FINALLY acknowledge this. egwene you’re the only bitch in this house i ever respected.

“oh, light, rand. what did you promise them?” mood

egwene actually makes an effort to get concessions from tuon AND SUCCEEDS (tuon agrees to give up tremalking) unlike rand just going “oh well there’s nothing i can do” the second tuon counters him and mat just standing there silently not even trying. because egwene is the only bitch in this house i ever respected.

me @ every character but egwene, gawyn, and elayne: you have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair

egwene announces that all sul’dam can channel. tuon tells her not to spread such lies. “oh? shall we test it, fortuona? you said you trained them yourself. you are a sul’dam, i presume? put the a’dam on your neck. i dare you. if i am wrong, it will do nothing to you. if i am right, you will be subject to its power, and will prove to be marath’damane...let us do it and test the real strength of your commitment. if you prove to be able to channel, will you do as you claim others should? will you stroll up to the collar and snap it around your own neck, fortuona? will you obey your own laws?” i am screaming and hollering in approval, but then, for some GODFORSAKEN reason, this DOES NOT HAPPEN. at this point being collared and forced to channel is literally the only thing that could possibly force tuon into any sort of character development, so WHY in the name of the light would you set this up so perfectly and then wuss out of following through???????????? what’s the point????????? i’m so mad!!!!!!!!! just when i think tuon might finally be forced to face a consequence for the first time in her life!!!

“‘i plan to live centuries,’ egwene hissed. ‘i will watch your empire crumble, fortuona. i will watch it with joy.’” AND YET EGWENE FUCKING DIES IN THE LAST BATTLE AND TUON’S EVIL ASS GETS TO LIVE!!!! IT’S SO UNFAIR I HATE IT!!!!!!!!!! nobody is going to stand up to the seanchan once egwene, possessor of the sole backbone in the westlands, is gone!!!! i’m sure egwene’s death will be a moving Heroic Sacrifice moment, but my god it’s the worst thing that could’ve possibly happened for the upcoming fourth age. the world doesn’t need rand or perrin or mat or nynaeve anymore after the last battle, but it needs egwene DESPERATELY. if an ef5 had to die, why couldn’t it have been literally any of them except egwene? except i don’t want rand to die because he deserves a second chance at life, and i don’t want nynaeve to die because she deserves her happy ending with lan after they’ve had a Doomed Relationship for so much of the series, and i don’t want mat to die because he needs to overthrow the seanchan empire and then go back to the westlands to marry rand and elayne. so, i will amend my statement: if an ef5 had to die, why couldn’t it have been perrin? lmao (tho i do stand by the fact that rand or nynaeve not making it would’ve been better For The World than egwene even if i would’ve been sad personally, and possibly mat as well unless i really AM meant to believe that he’ll destroy seanchan, in which case he needs to survive to the fourth age too)

mat intervenes and pushes them apart. “let’s be civil, ladies. don’t make me throw the pair of you over my knee.” i am going to strangle him and make it stick this time. my earlier-in-this-book sympathy for mat is over now, fuck post-WH mat all my homies hate post-WH mat. like can you IMAGINE a woman with no political authority saying this to two extremely powerful male rulers/leaders while they’re arguing about serious political and human rights topics? ..........okay cadsuane would absolutely do this, but aside from her.

“the people of the world need you two, and they need you levelheaded, you hear me?” they literally do not need tuon mat they would literally be so much better off without her. “this is bigger than any of us. when you fight each other, the dark one wins, and that is that. so stop behaving like children.” and so we have the culmination of the gross ass “one side wanting to enslave the other vs. the other not wanting to be enslaved being treated as equally petty, selfish, and in the wrong” theme that’s been present ever since COT. i’m fuming!!!! chewing rocks!!!!!!!!

“when you fight each other the dark one wins” would’ve been an effective line to use when the world leaders were squabbling in the big meeting scene or when rand and egwene were arguing, NOT when tuon is threatening to enslave egwene and egwene is saying she wants to see her slaver empire destroyed!

although at least mat does chide tuon a little bit extra and tell her that she needs egwene, and doesn’t say anything more to egwene or try to tell her that she needs tuon, so that’s a small mercy

the meeting ends and egwene returns to “where gawyn waited for her” sanderson couldn’t have gawyn present for/within earshot of the meeting because gawyn would’ve beat mat’s ass for treating egwene like that, and rightfully so. also because he would’ve just straight up killed tuon using his bloodknife ring abilities the second she threatened egwene. egwene wouldn’t kill tuon because she’s too practical and levelheaded, but gawyn would’ve snapped and taken her head off, my impulsive boy.

elayne’s exhausted herself channeling in battle, and birgitte actually admits that elayne was right to want to fight and that she did well and that seeing her fight right on the front lines inspired the soldiers, thank god.

elayne realizes that bashere’s been spreading misinformation, which led to them being taken by surprise by a second trolloc army, and concludes that he’s a darkfriend and fires him from being her general and puts him under guard. lan’s been noticing agelmar making mistakes too, so i’m guessing graendal’s messing with all the generals’ dreams.

i’m sad because i always was fond of bashere, but i’m also thrilled because now elayne is in charge and flexes her military general muscles and puts together a good battle plan on the spot! that’s my girl! fuck perrin and everyone else who claimed she’s only a good leader because she sits quietly and lets the male generals do all the work.

“the one power flooded into her, though she could hold only a trickle. she could act as if she weren’t exhausted, but her body knew the truth. she would lead them anyway.” ❤️❤️

min gets sent as a messenger from bryne to tuon. the aes sedai doing gateways have to make them as small as possible since they need to conserve their strength, and min is annoyed that they make her one so small she has to crawl through it. why don’t you do something useful rather than complaining that other people don’t have enough energy left to do things, min?

she mentions that one of the aes sedai notes her “breeches and curls” do NOT tell me min has been curling her hair even during the last fucking battle????? 💀💀 i hope that sanderson just forgot or didn’t realize that her hair wasn’t naturally curly (and it isn’t - there were multiple times in rj’s books where she mentioned that she started curling it For Rand) because otherwise, oh my god.

she’s been doing odd jobs in the camp for a week. interesting that a week has passed since the day before rand went to the pit of doom. “it wasn’t work that had required her, specifically, but it was better than sitting in tear and worrying about rand...or being angry at him for forbidding her to go to shayol ghul.” meanwhile, avi was briefly disappointed that rand wouldn’t take her but accepted immediately that it was the right course of action. “you’d have been a liability there, min told herself. you know it. he couldn’t worry about saving the world and protecting her from the forsaken at the same time.” at least she admits it. “sometimes, it was hard not to feel insignificant in a world of channelers like rand, elayne, and aviendha.” that’s because you ARE insignificant 😌 like, there are so many ways to pull off “non-magical non-warrior character has strength in other areas” and none of them were used with min. her viewings are useless and the emotional support she allegedly provides for rand is either nonexistent or detrimental 90% of the time.

like what’s going on???? lmao anyway

min was just internally moping about being useless but when mat says “hey i could use you” she gets offended that he phrased it rudely or something??? not sure if you noticed but we’re in the middle of a WAR here min, people don’t have time to waste on making sure their requests are phrased politely enough so as not to hurt your feelings.

min even seems to know about mat’s luck??? you’ve met him ONCE and it was before he had that luck! elayne doesn’t even know about it and she’s his bestie! what’s going on??? i would say rand told her, but i’m not sure even rand is aware of mat’s luck? totally possible that he could be, i just don’t remember.

“they’re insane, min. they’re all bloody insane.” “i’m sure egwene would help you escape if you ask, mat.” “well, i didn’t say they weren’t fun. just insane.” mat name ONE time that the seanchan, infamous war criminals and human rights abusers in whose company you’ve been constantly miserable and fearing for your life and your freedom, have been “fun”

“gritting her teeth, min went down on one knee. the woman was the empress, after all. min wouldn’t bow to mat or the generals, but it was only proper to show respect to fortuona.” literally why??? she’s not YOUR empress!

“who is this one, knotai? she thinks herself high.” “oh, well, she’s just the dragon reborn’s woman.” “how curious. that would make her your equal, knotai.” DJFKGJKJHJKDFHGLJ tuon is calling mat rand’s lover and you can’t change my mind

also, it’s making me completely insane yet again that mat is fully aware that min is rand’s girlfriend and is also fully aware that rand is elayne’s babydaddy and we just do not ever see him have any reaction to that or wonder what’s going on. and we can’t even say “maybe rand explained it to him offscreen while they were catching up” because they didn’t GET one of those catchups like rand & perrin and mat & perrin got.

mat tries to hustle min out: “just keep moving. don’t risk her deciding to snatch you up. she’s not particularly good at letting things go, once she has them in hand.” i was all prepared to feel sorry for him, but then, “he actually sounded proud, saying that.” sigh. “you’re as crazy as they are, min thought.” for once something we can agree on. i am trying so hard to interpret everything as mat having been brainwashed and psychologically beaten into submission, but at times it is difficult.

“i don’t belong to anyone. except maybe rand, and him to me.” compare with aviendha: “he did not own her, and she did not own him.” HMMM. very telling. we now have this, avi shunning the thought of possessive public touching while min drapes herself over rand in public constantly, avi accepting immediately that rand has his duty and she has hers while min mopes over rand not taking her to shayol ghul, avi thinking that she couldn’t be with rand until she knew who she was while min thinks she’ll be whatever rand wants her to be.............the two of them are truly at polar opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how they view relationships, with min being the end of “painfully insecure, possessive, and monogamous.” “we belong to each other” is probably meant to feel romantic, and if used it a different moment maybe it would be, but the fact that we had avi thinking mere CHAPTERS ago that she and rand don’t own each other really throws this line into sharp relief.

oh wack tuon declares that min is her truthspeaker now. is something interesting and non-rand-related finally happening to min for the first time in 14 books? also, note that it’s something interesting happening TO her rather than her DOING something interesting. that’s the real reason she’s insignificant compared to rand, elayne, and aviendha: not because she isn’t a channeler, but because she’s a passive character. things happen TO her, she doesn’t MAKE things happen.

“loial fought on. this song was not a song of victory. it was a song of life. loial did not intend to die here on this hillside. by the light, he had a book to finish before he went!” 😭❤️

mat is weirdly into min all of a sudden lmao hate that. although it IS further evidence for the “mat is gonna cheat on tuon so fast” folder, and that’s always a good thing. and i guess i shouldn’t have expected anything different when the “thinks of all women in terms of whether they’re fuckable” character and the “exists solely to cater to the straight male gaze” character met up.

“she was with rand, so that made her practically his sister.” so you’re saying that min is your sister-wife, because you are also with rand? also, contrast to in LOC when he was like “elayne is so hot, but i wouldn’t kiss her, not because she’s with rand, just because she’s annoying” mat was 100% willing to homewreck rand with elayne, make of that what you will jkjfgh

mat managed to retain his old clothes and puts them on now! phew

it’s so wild that tuon can just go “you’re my truthspeaker now” and snatch min???? and no one does anything about it???? well min, i guess you’re headed off to seanchan forever after the last battle. sucks for her and i’m not necessarily glad about someone else falling into seanchan hands.............but this DOES clear the way for avirandlayne throuple raising their six (6) babies in caemlyn endgame to happen, it has to be said.

mat mentions that he burned the ugly ratty coat he wore to visit elayne in TOM, aw he was so upset that she made fun of it djkfgj

“mat grinned at tuon, and she favored him with a smile. light, but he liked those smiles.” sigh. though this does absolutely read like a fully brainwashed damane being happy to receive a sul’dam’s approval, which..........well, it sure doesn’t SOOTHE me, but it’s better for mat’s characterization to believe that he’s been brainwashed and slave-broken rather than that he’s just fully bought into all this while in his right mind.

“gawyn stepped up to her side, faithful as always.” ❤️❤️ THIS loyal husband DOES spark joy.

egwene notes that gawyn is looking pale, as if at the start of a sickness. oh no!!!!! i think i remember it was mentioned that you don’t live long after activating the bloodknife rings, but idk if that was just because people only activate them to go on suicide missions or if it means that the rings themselves will actually kill you after a certain point. i do know already that gawyn dies (sob) but i don’t know how or when it will happen (same with egwene’s death, i only know the bare fact and not any details).

lan ousts agelmar and mat ousts bryne later in the chapter. and tenobia dies in the battle, so with her gone and bashere currently unfit to rule, does that mean my girl faile is now queen of saldaea? nice! i mean, rip tenobia and everything, but all hail queen faile.

“‘he seems to be yelling for the dragon reborn,’ galgan said. demandred’s voice boomed across the battlefield right then, enhanced by the one power. he was demanding that the dragon come and face him in a duel.” THIS IS SO FUNNY TO ME KJFGKHJ the Unhinged Ex energy of it all! the dragon is a little busy battling the dark one, demandred, read the room! i can’t tell you how much this is making me laugh!!

“mat inspected the fellow through the glass. ‘demandred, eh? has he gone a bit dotty, or what?’” mat watching demandred and going “imagine being so obsessed with rand. could not be me!”

in worse news, mat ends up getting his very own slave due to Can’t Kill A Woman behavior, so that’s fun. (he didn’t explicitly reference Can’t Kill A Woman or give any reason for saving the sharan channeler’s life, but i assume this is the reason.) his response to realizing he accidentally enslaved someone: 1) tells tuon she can have her (because slavery is fine as long as HE’S not the one doing it, i guess), and when tuon insists that the channeler is his, 2) “mat shrugged. what else could he do?” i can think of a few things, mat. just a few. “maybe, if the damane belonged to him, he could let her free or something.” all right that’s something at least. now to see if he actually follows through on that after the last battle or if he simply grows ambivalent enough to let her remain damane.........

“has he punished you for that?” “yes. he returned me to life.” wow moridin needs even MORE therapy than rand does

logain’s contingent arrives on elayne’s battlefied. “we came to you first. the black tower stands with the lion of andor.” fistpump! they may have given up on their deadbeat dad, but they went straight to stepmommy elayne the second they had the chance.

“the woman approaching wore fine seanchan silks, and egwene’s stomach turned at the sight. that finery existed because of a foundation of enslaved channelers, forced into obedience to the crystal throne.” GO OFF QUEEN!!!!! but then it turns out that the woman is min, so idk if that’s supposed to make egwene’s moral rant feel humorous or something? also, the narrative has definitely 100% forgotten that da’covale, aka regular non-channeling people, are also slaves (earlier in this book a westlander referred to them as “servants” which i remember seeing quite a bit in the late rj books too)

“‘you should see the things [the seanchan] drink, egwene.’ ‘i’ve seen them,’ egwene said, unable to keep her tone from coldness. ‘oh. yes. i suppose you have.’” absolute dick move by min here. wasn’t she in falme for a long period of time trying to help rescue egwene?? she should be even more aware of egwene’s captivity than mat! why does everybody have such an easy time just Forgetting that their friend was enslaved and traumatized?

“‘i suppose i’m better off with fortuona. she...knows about a certain talent of mine, thanks to mat, and it might let me help her. and you.’ the statement was laden with meaning.” is min actually going to try to use her newfound influence with tuon to take seanchan down from the inside? now that would be an interesting plotline for her. why didn’t this happen to her 7 books ago? i say, axe min as rand’s love interest and instead send her into tuon’s path MUCH earlier on so that she can use her viewings to influence her into having a little smidge of character development, and plus min has known the sul’dam secret since TGH and so might make more headway with tuon there than mat ever bothered to. then have mat stay with rand instead, being his general and a childhood friend to remind him of who he used to be (since mat actually knows the shepherd boy and min does not). they would both be way more useful in the other’s plotline. hell, we can even switch the romances and make min tuon’s love interest and mat rand’s!

egwene on mat: “a carouser, leering at every pretty woman he met. treating her like a painting and not a person.” i’m probably supposed to think egwene is being unfair to mat and misjudging him, but this is literally exactly how he’s been treating women in his own narration ever since WH and even ACOS. since then, every single woman he meets, he describes in terms of whether or not she’s fuckable. this was not the case in the first 6 books.

“he’d jumped into the river to save kiem lewin from drowning. of course, she hadn’t been drowning. she’d merely been dunked under the water by a friend, and mat had come running, throwing himself into the water to help. the men of emond’s field had made sport of him for months about that. the next spring, mat had pulled jer al’hune from the same river, saving the boy’s life...that was how mat was. he’d grumbled and muttered all winter about how people made sport of him, insisting that next time, he’d just let them drown. then the moment he’d seen someone in danger, he’d gone splashing right back in. egwene could remember gangly mat stumbling from the river, little jer clinging to him and gasping, a look of pure terror in his eyes.” 😭😭😭😭😭

“he was a scoundrel and a fool, but she trusted him. light help her, but she did. she’d trust him with her life.” ❤️❤️❤️ i remember when they parted in LOC being so afraid that that was the last time they’d ever see each other, so i’m so happy to see them interact again in this book! even if their one interaction thus far was mat being shitty to egwene. but i have hope that there will be more and better interactions coming.

once again we have mat fretting over how he married an “aes sedai” and not the fact that he married a slaver

“she was something incredible, though. he felt a thrill each time she gave orders; she did it so naturally. elayne and nynaeve could take lessons. tuon did look very nice on that throne.” 🙄🙄🙄 and once again we have mat gushing over how good tuon is at bossing people around, but failing to provide us with any examples of her showing ACTUAL leadership skills. and gushing over how good tuon is at bossing people around when he constantly shits on the wondergirls for a non-malicious and less extreme version of the same behavior. elayne could take lessons? please. unlike tuon and mat, elayne knows that being a ruler is about more than giving orders and looking good on a throne. mat’s “coming to respect nobility” arc, if it had to happen at all, should’ve been him realizing that being a monarch is hard fucking work, rather than declaring that tuon is Not Like Other Nobles when she embodies every single one of his original negative perceptions of them.

but the good part of this passage is that it gives grounds for mat to have a Queen Elayne kink in a better universe, god bless. getting railed by elayne would honestly do him so much good.

“the sul’dam, catrona, almost choked on the words ‘aes sedai.’ mat couldn’t blame her. those could be tough words to speak.” and once again we have mat showing more empathy for the sul’dam than for the aes sedai they think should be enslaved.

“he didn’t look too hard at the damane [whom he accidentally captured]. mat was responsible for her being captured. it was better than her fighting for the shadow, wasn’t it? blood and bloody ashes, he thought to himself. you are doing a fine job of persuading tuon not to use damane, matrim cauthon. capturing one yourself...” sorry, have you EVER tried to persuade tuon not to use damane? this is literally the first time i’ve seen any indication of that, mat. at least he’s feeling some guilt and sense of responsibility right now, for a whole 3 sentences.

“it was unnerving how quickly the sharan woman had taken to her captivity. the sul’dam had all remarked upon it. barely a moment of struggle, then complete subservience.” AKA EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO MAT IN COT

“demandred - despite continuing to rave about the dragon reborn - was continually testing mat’s defenses.” JKJDFGKJJKH KILLING ME AGAIN rafe please give demandred a canon messy gay backstory with LTT because no other justification for this behavior would be as good.

more lines of mat gushing over tuon’s pretty eyes and how much he likes it when she's pleased with him

mat just referred to the sharan channelers as “marath’damane” ugh. but then a paragraph later he mentions “[the seanchan] had started using the term [aes sedai] instead of marath’damane by mat’s order” so that’s good. maybe the prior line i’ll chalk up to it originally being galgan’s line which sanderson then gave to mat and forgot to change “marath’damane” to “channelers” or something.

“he had an inkling of what tuon might be capable of, if she grew displeased with min. he loved her - light, he was pretty sure he did. but he also let himself be a little afraid of her. he’d have to keep watch so that tuon didn’t decide to ‘educate’ min.” okay this is bone chilling. mat is SO CLEARLY in an abusive marriage and a subconscious part of him KNOWS it and is trying to protect min from tuon, though he’s resigned to the thought that it’s too late to protect himself. but the conscious part of him is insisting that he loves tuon, he really does! heartbreaking.

mat spends a whole paragraph talking about how it sucks that seanchan women’s armor doesn’t show boobs and how he ACTUALLY ASKED the armorer if that should be changed. “light, these people had no sense of morality. a fellow needed to know if he was fighting a woman on the battlefield. it was only right.” i’m thinking that in addition to Objectifying Women and Can’t Kill A Woman nonsense, mat is also afraid he might be like “ooh that soldier’s hot!” and then realize it’s a man jdfkjg just accept it mat it’s okay.

“tuon blinked once, looking straight at min. the room seemed to drop into shade, feeling colder. mat shivered. he didn’t like it when tuon got like this. that stare of hers...it seemed like the stare of another person. a person without compassion.” i mean this is literally how she always is? name ONE time when tuon has displayed compassion. also, more “mat being trapped in an abusive marriage and trying to convince himself that it isn’t so and that this isn’t the ~real~ tuon” vibes here.

really interesting scene between tuon and min regarding min’s viewings. tuon attempts to take advantage of the viewings and prevent them from happening, which is a refreshing change from how everyone else just immediately accepted “ah well they can’t be changed, no point trying.” and min stands up to tuon and refuses to share her viewings anymore if tuon will just use them to execute people she suspects of future treason, which is a refreshing change from everyone else having their spine removed when tuon is in the room. see? these two characters play off each other quite well and this plotline/dynamic should’ve been set up way sooner! my 2 most hated characters in the series, yet when they’re together i actually kinda enjoy their interactions lmao it’s witchcraft! probably because min is finally showing an actual personality outside of loving rand now that she’s been separated from him, and because she argues with and challenges tuon and tuon actually listens to her (to an extent) since she’s her truthspeaker.

“if only min would learn a little respect.” mat is literally so scared of his friend getting abused the same way he is, he wants her to just keep her head down.

i love egwene and mat talking in code about his medallion! “do you still have your pet fox?” “i do. he’s snuggled up nice and warm.” “take care of him. i would not see you suffer gareth bryne’s fate.”

mat says “what does elayne want to do? isn’t she in charge?” king shit! respecting her authority and wanting her input, unlike perrin! and then he asks them to make another gateway to get elayne to this meeting so she can discuss with them!

“elayne strode through, thick with child, eyes practically on fire.” mat shaking hands meme with rand and aviendha over commenting on the fire in elayne’s eyes

“she maintained the posture of a queen, but her disheveled hair and clothing burned in several places indicated what she’d been through.” and his earlier description of egwene: “blood and bloody ashes - if he had a soldier with that cast to his skin and that look in his eyes, mat would send the fellow to bed rest for a week.” see, mat? this is what ACTUAL leadership looks like, while tuon has been sitting cozy on her throne letting everyone else do the fighting.

i love to see mat and elayne making battle plans together!!!! power couple!!!!!! tuon could never (she’s just sitting there silently for the whole discussion)

“now, if only [galad] could right [elayne’s] moral compass. she wasn’t a bad person, but galad wished that she - like other monarchs - could see as clearly as he did. he was beginning to accept that they didn’t. he was beginning to accept that it was all right, so long as they tried their best. whatever he had inside of him that allowed him to see the right of things was obviously a gift of the light, and holding others to scorn because they had not been born with it was wrong. just as it would be wrong to hold a man to scorn because he had been born with only one hand, and was therefore an inferior swordsman.” y’all are really trying to tell me that gawyn is the worse trakand brother when galad’s self-righteous holier-than-thou superiority-complex christian-fundamentalist ass is out here behaving like this??? unreal. galad fucking sucks!!!!!!! and has learned absolutely nothing from what morgase was trying to teach him in the last book - his arc should’ve been coming to realize that his view of what’s right isn’t absolute truth, but instead it was coming to accept that it’s okay if other people aren’t as good and perfect as he is because they have not been blessed by the light like he has. bonkers!!!!

like, this is VERY close to how tuon thinks in her povs. this sense of entitlement and enlightenment, this conviction that they are the only ones who know what’s truly right and they must help the ignorant rest of the world see it too - that is BANG ON seanchan thinking.

“he had stopped worrying that his words offended [elayne] long ago. it seemed he couldn’t claim that a day was pleasant or his tea warm without her taking offense somehow. it would have been nice if aybara hadn’t run off. that man was a leader - one of the few that galad had ever met - that one could actually talk to without worrying that he’d take offense.” galad literally being a rightwinger complaining about how easily offended everybody is these days by harmless little things such as being part of a group trying to take away their rights! clearly, elayne is just a special snowflake who’s too sensitive, it’s so unfair that she’s mean to galad! 

no wonder reddit is on galad’s side and whines so much about how immature and prejudiced elayne’s behavior towards him is

the virgin galad (religious zealot, misogynist, joins a group dedicated to oppressing people like his sister and then complains about how mean she is to him about it) vs. the chad gawyn (respects women, devoted his life to protecting his wife, switched sides when he realized that his original side was actively bringing harm to his loved ones)

in conclusion, fuck galad all my homies hate galad. except all my homies DON’T hate galad and so i am alone being old man yells at cloud meme! wake up, my homies! he’s the worst!

there IS a small moment where he instinctively thinks of the whitecloaks as “the whitecloaks” instead of “the children” and is shocked with himself about it, so i guess that’s something. too little too late!

we catch up with faile retrieving the horn from tar valon! wow i completely forgot about that. their conversation at the beginning of the book where they sent her to get it feels like it was 5 books ago.

and aviendha is attacked by some of the aiel male channelers! turns out that when an aiel man can channel they send him to the blight (i’m sure this was mentioned before, i just forgot) and that’s how they all got corrupted by the dark one.

“mat had run off to the seanchan, talmanes to fight alongside queen elayne. one by one, everyone in this group was being eaten by trees, mud, or monsters. why did they all leave olver alone?” “noal...dead. would mat die too?” 😭😭😭

“i am not spending the last battle clinging to a rock! [nynaeve] thought.” my mood exactly lmao we’re on page 600 and she and moiraine have not done anything yet!

it turns out that alanna is in the cavern and is dying, and rand will snap and go crazy if she dies, so nynaeve has to save her but she can’t use saidar because she’s still linked with rand. oh shit!!! it’s nice to see alanna’s bond with rand FINALLY be relevant and have narrative payoff.

egwene is still so ready to help mat escape tuon and the seanchan 😭

mat complains that tuon wants him to sit in judgment. “mat was not going to order men to be executed, and that was that.” okay so then you should sit in judgment and pronounce them innocent rather than avoid jury duty and let other people pronounce them guilty and have them executed? obvious solution here, mat. he complains about elayne and other nobles (gawyn here in this passage) being entitled, yet when HE is given power and privilege that he could potentially use to help others, he does nothing with it. (obviously he’s too busy preparing for the battle to sit in judgment right at this very moment, so that’s fair enough, but his objection IS that he doesn’t want to execute people rather than that he has more pressing duties right now.)

we get 2 little nuggets of the mat-gawyn interactions i’d hoped for in the previous book and didn’t get and i’m delighted!!! “gawyn trakand was apparently practicing to be an aes sedai sometime, because he kept giving mat glares that would have made moiraine proud.” “‘burn me, first rand, then you [egwene]. is everybody going to chivy me about these days? gawyn, you want a turn?’ ‘yes, please.’ he sounded eager. ‘shut up,’ mat said.” JDFGJKHKJHJFG that’s one of my top 10 interactions in the book so far, why did it make me laugh so hard!! could’ve been even better if mat had married elayne and he and gawyn were now annoyed brothers-in-law!

“he could feel something pulling on him, tugging him northward. rand would need him soon.” “he narrowed his eye. rand was tugging on him.” one more cauthor ta’veren pull instance for the road!

“this is it, egwene. take a deep breath, a last pull on the brandy, or burn your final pinch of tabac. have a good look at the ground before you, as it’s soon going to be covered in blood. in an hour, we’ll be in the thick of it. the light watch over us all.” dun dun duuuuuuuun!!!! and the next chapter, titled “the last battle,” is TWO HUNDRED PAGES so i’m calling it a day for this recap.

[byler-alarmist]

since lucas was kinda hinted as bi, do you think byclair has a real chance in canon? what'd be your reaction if they went with byclair instead of byler after not developing lucas and will's bond that much for 4 seasons?

Hi, anon!!! First of all, thank you for the ask!

I really do think they are hinting at Lucas being bi, which makes me so very happy.

As for Byclair, I low-key ship it! They have a warm relationship and you can tell they both value and care about each other.

I especially love how Lucas is shown to be willing to take matters into his own hands where Will is concerned (S1 where he was determined to stop what he believed was the Party wasting time when they could be looking for Will the practical way, S3 where he went out of his way to talk to Will when they were alone and attempt to apologize for his AND Mike's bad behavior).

And the way he was so much like Jonathan when he was trying to bring Mike back to the (supposed) reality that Will was dead, even though there were tears in his eyes and you could tell it was breaking his heart to even acknowledge it out loud.

The way he says "then what was that in the water?" breaks my heart because you can hear and see his anguish....it's not that he doesn't want to believe Will is alive, but he's so hesitant to entertain foolish hopes and get heartbroken all over again.

That's the difference between Mike and Lucas' feelings to me. Lucas will do his best to move on without Will, but Mike's world literally shuts down without him. Time stops. A piece of him dies when Will is gone.

Of course, if they made it clear in S5 that Will was happiest with Lucas and their love was mutual and strong, I would be.*almost* content with a Byclair endgame.

Butttttttt......(and there is a big but here).......I think it would invalidate all the Byler buildup throughout the seasons.

It's been shown time and again that Mike is the one Will wants, and it doesn't look like he'll be getting over him anytime soon. And frankly, when I look back at all seasons of ST, I have trouble believing Mike could ever get over Will.

Besides that, even though Max is in a coma, she is still the one Lucas loves the most.

Honestly, the only way I could see a Byclair endgame is if Mike and Max both died and Lucas and Will found healing in each other.

That would be a very bittersweet ending, and while it would be nice to see Byclair sharing some tender moments, it would fall a bit flat to me knowing that all the crazy together, blue meets yellow in the west, paladin and cleric, etc was for nothing.

So to answer your question, I think a Byclair endgame would leave me feeling a little lost, like if this was somehow the twist ending they wanted us to see coming, why did they leave all the breadcrumbs leading to Byler? I wouldn't hate it, but I'd think less of the sbow's writing.

Slightly spicy headcanon to end this post: I could almost see Bywheelclair having a poly arrangement somewhere down the line where bi Lucas occasionally joins them for date night LMAO he's the only person I think Mike and Will would agree to share each other with, because c'mon, it's Lucas 😹 and bi Max would be cool with it because she and El would just have a date night of their own (Elumax canon)

[emblazons]

Hi! I started following you recently, i love your ST analysis posts 💙 some of them have made me believe more in Byler endgame (I'm one of those people who have been "hurt" too many times) and for that i thank you.

I just read your post where you talk about why Will was sidelined in s3 and it makes so much sense. Do you think they also used that sidelining to highlight how alienated he felt during the season? It wouldn't be the first time they get meta in the show itself.

This is so kind of you to say @izzymeadows! As someone who definitely walked into "byler analysis" as a skeptic, I'm glad to hear it. If me trying to parse out what's going on in this show helps someone else's understanding of it too, I've done my (proverbial) job!

Note: for everyone else, the post referred to in this ask is here.

To your question, though: I do think that the story itself made Will "fade into the background" as a sense that he himself feels that way because of how his friends are acting, in addition to how he's just now realizing he is gay (as he's been made fun of for all his life)—its why we get these little scenes too (ones focused on Will, iconically enough) showing us that he himself feels left behind—

—why he eventually comes to a point where he believes DnD (which are inherently/thematically tied to his relationship with Mike) and his ever-growing romantic feelings can't take precedence the way he once hoped they would—

—and why the theme of him pushing other people (see: Mike) into this painful new "maturity" (despite Mike not actually wanting a push toward "responsibility" OR El from Will) gets explored in S4—

—especially given how he both shrinks back in his hopes for relationship with Mike (even though they're still painful for him) until Mike himself says he wants it back...and even has a wardrobe that makes him "blend into the background" (I know people have done several analyses on this, so if you have one to link, please do).

Now: that isn't to say that Will is happy about any of this; he still wants to hold onto his "childish" interests and be openly in love with Mike in his heart of hearts—he just thinks those things are impossible, and so tries (and repeatedly fails lmao) to let them go.

So, to your point: yes, I think that Will being "pushed back" or "sidelined" in the story is a meta function of the narrative in that Will himself is pushing himself back in order to manage his own expectations, so as not to hurt himself believing he might get something the rain fight made him feel like he was foolish and/or immature for wanting.

Will moved back from the forefront of the story because HE believes that people don't get what they want and have to be forced to "grow up" and settle for things other than what they want (like much of the GA seems to think as well lmfao). Ironically enough though...the war between these things in Will (and Mike) is inherent to the themes The Duffers are exploring in the story—and given what we know about their value system...

...I'd put money on the fact that Will's defeatism is going to be 'proved wrong' as we conclude his "coming of age" and the story come S5.

I hope that answers your question! And thanks again for the vote of confidence (and the ask)! :)

[likeadeuce]

would love to hear about "surplus if we need it" !

For Tag Game (see above):

"surplus if we need it" is the sequel to "Crosstown" (https://archiveofourown.org/works/51719059), my niche'iest fandom, based on the novel "Confidence," by Rafael Frumkin. Long story short, the MCs are 22 year old boyfriends, semi-closeted, and running an extremely disreputable stock market scam in the guise of a 'wellness startup.' Title comes from 'Riches & Wonders' by the Mountain Goats and is suitably on the nose. This fic exists for exactly 1-2 other people and Idk when it's getting finished but I have enjoyed writing it so:

I’d had a few drinks and my after-dinner edible was kicking in or I never would have said it, but I had and I did. “Are we ever going to do anything with all this money? Like, for us?”

“It’s all for us, buddy.  We’re not in it for charity.”  Orson didn’t look up from his laptop, where he’d been deep in a database of big-money donors to mental-health nonprofits. We had theorized it wouldn’t take much to get them to redirect some of their munificence to a couple fresh-faced boys with a shiny startup.  Doing good while doing well was in the zeitgeist in northern California in 2012, and Orson was good at riding a zeitgeist, regardless of the small detail that our shiny startup, did not and, if I understood the plan correctly, never would offer a useful product or service of any kind.

“I know.  I get it.  Our assets aren’t liquid.  We invest and we re-invest, we grow and we leverage our growth to expand our scale.”  I was the CFO.  It was my five-year plan.  The five-year-plan would turn into a ten year plan into a thirty-year-plan, once Orson had figured out the endgame.  The plans were mine but the endgame was his, and whenever I tried to talk to him about the endgame, he told me it was evolving.   Knowing that we had a future, however vague, was reassuring, but it was hard to think so far ahead all the time. “I’m not talking about five years from now, or once we get it all figured out.  We get to pay ourselves, and just once I’d like to pay ourselves enough to spend a week on a private beach sipping cocktails with umbrellas in them.”

Orson finally looked at me. He didn’t drink alcohol, though he basically never got judgmental when I did; he even liked having somebody who would taste whatever expensive whiskey or personal-branded tequila some potential investor wanted to impress us with.  “They can put an umbrella in a vegan smoothie for you, I promise.”  

That wasn’t it.  “You’ve never said you wanted something like that before,” he said.  “Do you think it would make you happy?”

I felt foolish.  I had given absolutely no thought to private beaches or fancy drinks before the words came out of my mouth. We’d lived in California for six months and driven to look at the Pacific Ocean exactly once.  It just popped in my head when I was trying to think of the kind of thing that people did when they had money and time.  “I guess not.”  I pulled my hoodie over my face.  “Never mind me.”

And he didn’t mind me, just looked back at the computer.  “What do you think Alliance for Healthy Kids does?  It’s like ten million dollars to get Nickelodeon stars to make ads telling kids to eat celery instead of potato chips.  Tell me that’s any less of a fucking scam than what we do.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty dumb.”  He didn’t notice me rocking on the couch, pulling my knees toward my chest, thinking that of course he was right, a vacation wasn’t going to make me happy.  I was supposed to be happy here, on the sun-soaked West Coast, making money with the man I loved.  We had all the sex we wanted, whenever we wanted, perfected each other’s schemes, finished each other’s sentences.  If I wasn’t happy here, what was there?

[factorialsotherfandoms]

I'm busy tomorrow and don't promise to hold to the results of the poll, rather just guide me, but... What to work on on Thursday... It's... mostly my baby au because ofc it is

(Anything marked 3 stars contains Forever as fair warning. This is because part of an AU I started before everything and was already 40,000 words into and I refuse to abandon)

Relevant fic to option 1 is this one

Note for the modern AU of as I oneshot it probably wouldn't /get/ to the polycule, but like... It'd be the start of one. I just have a cute idea. Likely established FitPac and bestie exes FitZa as I did last time, so dragging Philza in and making them not so exes ^^; the cute is the initial meeting and discovery party.

I... Don't think the others need notes, given starts are explained at the top.

And, again, no promises I'll actually abide by poll just they help to have when I want to write and suffer. And it might not be Thursday either some of these are long projects.

[acourtofthought]

No. To summarise your entire post, you suggested that because Elain doesn’t like cruelty, and Azriel engages with cruelty… they cannot be together, because Elain would be “sacrificing what she is comfortable with,” as it “goes against her beliefs and values.”

If that was even remotely true, then we would have already witnessed Elain’s discomfort in Azriel’s presence. If Elain was so repulsed by Azriel and his supposed “cruelty,” then I find it hard to believe that she would be buying thoughtful gifts for him, or that she would be leaning in to kiss him on Solstice night. “Oh but she doesn’t know about Azriel’s cruelty” she is a SEER !!

And even if she wasn’t a seer, do you truly believe that Elain, who has fond feelings towards Azriel, would suddenly switch up on him if she discovered that he was required to torture the enemies of the Night Court (ie. not good people !!) as part of his job? The same girl who has always loved Nesta, no matter her level of cruelty? The same girl who is known for seeing the good in people - in places and things?

“I gazed again at that sad, dark house—the place that had been a prison. Elain had said she missed it, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at the cottage. If she beheld not a prison but a shelter—a shelter from a world that had possessed so little good, but she tried to find it anyway, even if it had seemed foolish and useless to me. She had looked at that cottage with hope; I had looked at it with nothing but hatred. And I knew which one of us had been stronger.”

As a comparison, this is like saying that Bryce, who vehemently hates the Asteri (and even lost her best friend to them), can’t romantically be involved with Hunt, because he worked for the Asteri for 200+ years, and did terrible, unforgivable things in their name.

“Based on precedence, every Archeron (or any SJM endgame couple for that matter) either started off uncomfortable around their endgame person or eventually developed some sort of discomfort around them before ending up with them so there is a very real chance Elain has a reason for her behavior towards Lucien that could still result in them ending up together.”

So you acknowledge that Elain’s preferences and opinions can change… yet it’s so hard for you to believe that Elain can’t see the nuance in Azriel’s spymaster duties, and the torture is he obliged to take part in? That she couldn’t come to accept that part of him?

And, if we’re giving weight to precedence, then every Archeron sister also ended up with one of the Bat Boys.

And, every single SJM endgame couple experienced conflict and discomfort before they accepted the mating bond, sure. But absolutely zero SJM endgame couples went through a period of flat-out aversion and non-interaction. Feyre once hated Rhys, Aelin once despised Rowan, Nesta and Cassian were always at each others throats, and Bryce even immediately cut Hunt off after his betrayal - but not a single one of those women were ever so disinterested and avoidant of their mate as Elain is to Lucien.

And again, Elain is a seer. She can see the future. If she is going to work with Lucien to save the world, if she’s going to travel the world with him, if she’s going to rule the Day Court with him, if they are going to mate and wed and find their happily ever after… she would be able to see all of that already. And if that’s the case; then why would she avoid him?

This is going to sound rude but have you not read the books?

First there is NOTHING wrong with my suggesting that Elain and Azriel would be incompatibile because they have a difference in values. Thats literally one of the main reasons relationships fail. I'm not sure why that thought is offensive to you but I can assure you there's been many a study done and many expert opinions saying the exact same thing.

Can they still be in a relationship despite it? Sure.

But do I think it means it might lead to problems for them? Absolutely. It's not like Elain would see him in action and say, "you're a bad disgusting man and I can't bear to look at you!" What would happen is there'd be a twinge of unease and discomfort. Then he'd come home every day and they'd talk about what that looked like and he'd feel uneasy admitting to Elain who he tortured for information because he'd noticed the bit of discomfort that crossed her face anytime he mentioned having to hurt someone so he'd start hiding details. Or he'd tell her and she'd try to encourage him to find other methods which would make him feel even guiltier for the things he'd done.

You realize relationships fail in the real world all the time right? People struggle to maintain love because of a difference in views and interests and that's just life and no one is a bad person for discovering they aren't compatible enough to be with someone in the long term.

And just because there is precedence for two sisters ending up with a "bat boy" doesn't mean Elain should definitely end up with the third. There's things that are actually important in predicting endgame pairings that go beyond "keeping it in the family" 😂😂😂

And your example of Bryce and Hunt. I'm not talking about Elain overcoming prejudice or hating something someone had to do because they were a SLAVE. We've already seen that where initially the sisters weren't comfortable with the Fae and two eventually fell in love with them (and Elain will most likely end up with a Fae male too). Not to mention..... We have never had an SJM FMC outside Elain who is noted as BEING BOTHERED BY CRUELTY. Another important fact is that the FMC was fully aware of what the male had done and she knew what she was getting into before ending up with him. Elain and Az were about to kiss yet she "had no idea the things he's done". You don't find that just a tiny bit worrisome?

Elain is a character who doesn't like cruelty. Could she suddenly become bloodthirsty or take delight in seeing her enemies suffer? Sure! But that's not the direction SJM seems to be taking her because of everything we know after she stabbed the King (immediately dropped the knife while Nesta cut his head off, returned TT with no further interest in learning to handle weapons, us being told that cruelty still bothers her in SF). So that does not seem like something that's changing because it's not a misconception Elain has about a certain group of people, it's the thought of people harming other people that bothers her. She can still acknowledge someone isn't all bad while it making her uncomfortable. I'm not sure why you're trying to argue against that aspect about Elain's personality, why you insist that it means nothing. The IC has witnessed Az do these things and it makes them a bit uncomfortable even though they too often resort to violence. Yet it's only Elain who is noted as being bothered by cruelty, a key piece of information that sets her apart from the main characters in the IC and that the author really drilled home in SF. Also, Elain is notably absent anytime Az is performing his "symphony of pain" so you pretending she'd be comfortable witnessing it is you serving your ship rather than being rational.

And to your point that Elain somehow knows what Az does, which I still don't agree with, then why would SJM bother telling us that she's bothered by cruelty? Doesn't that seem a little strange to add that into the book when we know Azriel's job is to TORTURE PEOPLE? Wouldn't SJM have added something like "but she understood the need for it in certain situations" or something along those lines?

And yes, Elain loves Nesta despite the things she may have done but those are different than hurting people through vicious means on the regular. Did she seem like she was happy when Nesta beheaded the King? Do you think she wanted to run up and kiss Nesta after that? You can love someone while choosing to distance yourself from a lifestyle that's different than what you want for yourself. Did it seem like Nesta and Elain were BFFs in Silver Flames? Hanging out, hitting up bars together? Training together? They are very different people and even by the end of SF the only thing we see them do together is visit their fathers grave. To me, they are on different paths and while that doesn't mean they love each other less, it does mean they're not going to be connecting on a level where their lives intertwine in a major way.

"We would have witnessed Elain's discomfort in Azriel's presence".

Please share with me evidence from the book where Elain has experienced the "real" Azriel. The one who left Mor shaking after his attack on Eris. The one where Azriel is standing with a bloody TT after cutting up his enemies. The one where he tries to argue against Rhys and Feyre's orders and the one where he says "There is a darkness to the Dread Trove that Elain should not be exposed to" and "he hadn't gotten that far with his planning, certainly not beyond the fantasies he pleasured himself to" and "if Lucien kills Graysen, good riddance" and "I'll defeat him with little effort", not at all caring about what that would do to Elain or peace.

Not only do we not see that on page but Azriel straight up tells us in his thoughts that she doesn't know that side of him and he's been avoiding her so how can she know him? Hiding a major part of who he is while being "soft", "gentle" and oh so polite around Elain then being someone completely different away from her is a MAJOR RED FLAG. This is not a mafia romance, this is an SJM book and she likes her couples to share similar core values.

Please also share with me where Elain gets to choose what visions she sees.

Why wouldn't she have looked to see whether Feyre would live while giving birth? Why wouldn't she have seen that Rhys would die in the war? Why wouldn't she have looked and seen that Azriel was going to tell her she was a mistake so she could have then avoided seeing him Solstice evening?

Not only does she not decide what she sees, the visions are murky and unclear. Otherwise she would have warned Feyre and Nesta that their lives were at risk in the library that day.

Also, if she had seen a vision of Lucien and knows they aren't going to be together, WHY HASN'T SHE FREED HIM FROM THE BOND AND ASKED HIM NOT TO COME AROUND ANYMORE? And in regards to her avoiding Lucien which is somewhat different from other FMC, Elain is a very different character (LUCIEN is a different character) so her reaction is going to be somewhat different than a more aggressive SJM FMC. Also, she is the ONLY female who had a bond instantly snap and the only female who was engaged when it snapped. You've got to realize things are going to look a bit different for them.

None of your points make any sense at all.

Did you read TOG? Aelin and Rowan hated one another to the point that he punched her in the face. The only reason they were forced to interact is because Maeve commanded that he do so.

No one has yet had to force Lucien and Elain to interact because they are the first pair we've ever seen a bond snap into place for immediately and she had somewhere to go that took her away from Lucien the moment it happened. Then we did see them interact later in ACOWAR, she invited him back to live in Velaris yet something happened to have her draw back again in the novella / SF. Since we don't know what that is we'll have to wait and find out but I highly doubt Elain inviting her mate to live in the town she lived in means that she's completely averse to him. From a plot standpoint it makes sense that the author had to create a "will they / won't they" situation until it's time for Elains book because what good does it do to make them look like they're BFFs through Nesta's book? Then there's no mystery as to what will happen between them.

I don't know why YOU are so offended by what the author herself has told us.

Maybe SJM will give us new information in the next book and it will sway my opinion on things but I'm not making up that SJM has her endgame couples go through a period of hating / ignoring one another before getting together, no matter what that looks like (Feysand / Nessian / Rowalin/ Quinlar), etc. So shipping Elucien, considering she is a fated mates author and SHE MADE THEM MATES shouldn't be that wild of an idea to you regardless of where they currently stand.

SJM also told us:

Feyre, HIGH LADY OF THE NIGHT COURT, is bothered by what she saw from Az even though she KNEW what she was about to see.

Elain has never seen or been made aware of the things Az has done.

Elain is bothered by cruelty.

Elain wants to start doing more (which is not the same thing as violence) but Az waits until she's not around to say that she shouldn't.

Az has never considered a future with Elain beyond his sexual fantasies though he planned his snowball victory for a year.

Seriously, why the hell are you so triggered that I'm just piecing those things together and drawing a conclusion from them? I didn't write them, SJM did and this is going to sound bitchy but you can't be that clueless that there is a possibility that SJM may have in fact put those things in there to let us know why Az and Elain wouldn't make a good endgame couple. Just like she gave us warning signs that Tamlin and Feyre were not going to last, she could be the doing the exact same with E/riel.

To date, SJM has never told us why Elain draws away from Lucien so I'm allowed to be unsure as to the reasons for that based of both Feyre and Nesta having drawn away from Rhys / Cassian yet still ending up with them. But she HAS given us all a lot of information about Elain's personality and Azriel's personality and in my opinion those two things don't fit together when you consider she's shown us in the past that she doesn't prefer opposites attract couples.

[copepods]

omg dsmp star wars au!!! mandalorian techno!! sleepy bois found family?? phil as a mercenary/bounty hunter (also best pilot in the galaxy, duh) who met everyone and took them in? wil, tommy and tubbo who grew up to become bounty hunters like phil and turning to rebels?? for some reason i could see kristin being like, a jedi who went into hiding with phil post order-66. :0 actual space pirate puffy! with her own crew! also somehow i see niki as another jedi. and rebel ranboo? also foolsamponk as a group whose mission is literally helping people/settlements after they're attacked by the empire. they can't fight back, but they can help with the aftermath, they just really wanna help. (of course, if you wanna add angst, you can make awesamdude either getting tricked into making a deal with the empire, or getting captured+brainwashed into working with them. ya know. reconditioning.) endgame is all of them joining the rebels and the rebels winning, cause hey, f*** the empire :)

(sorry if this is, incoherent or doesn't make sense in any way. i haven't been in dsmp since before the prison break stream(?) but your post just made my brain go haywire lmao)

unfortunately no sbi found family in this one 😭 the whole au takes place pre-anakin so whatever happens post o66 is up to you! maybe they all die who knows

wilbur does have ties with phil, techno, AND tommy though so they probably all meet at least once. but they don't get along very well to say the least. wilbur has some things to work through

i see puffy as a jedi master with foolish as her former student! foolish is a golden-skinned nautolan whos the sexiest dude in the temple. everyone is in love with him.

[rigg647]

ERA BY ERA BLURB! ―୨୧⋆ ˚

after making the peter strahm foolish one au, i’ve been thinking about this for quite some time. a blurb of every single song taylor swift has released from the main eras. i will add self titled and reputation vault tracks when they are released. I WILL NOT BE UPDATING THIS REGULARLY. it will usually be when i’m just feeling like posting a little something, but not a full written thing.

i also will be excluding certain songs listed here.

- marjorie

- ronan

- forever winter

- bigger than the whole sky

-soon you’ll get better

-epiphany

Tim McGraw

Picture To Burn

Teardrops On My Guitar

A Place In This World

Cold As You

The Outside

Tied Together With A Smile

Stay Beautiful

Should’ve Said No

Mary’s Song

Our Song

I’m Only Me When I’m With You

Invisible

A Perfectly Good Heart

MORE TBA!

Fearless

Fifteen

Love Story

Hey Stephen

White Horse

You Belong With Me

Breathe

Tell Me Why

You’re Not Sorry

The Way I Loved You

Forever & Always

The Best Day

Change

Jump Then Fall

Untouchable

Come In With The Rain

Superstar

The Other Side Of The Door

Today Was A Fairytale

You All Over Me

Mr. Perfectly Fine

We Were Happy

That’s When

Don’t You

Bye Bye Baby

Mine

Sparks Fly

Back To December

Speak Now

Dear John

Mean

The Story Of Us

Never Grow Up

Enchanted

Better Than Revenge

Innocent

Haunted

Last Kiss

Long Live

Ours

Superman

Electric Touch

When Emma Falls In Love

I Can See You

Castles Crumbling

Foolish One 💜

Timeless

State Of Grace

Red

Treacherous

I Knew You Were Trouble

All Too Well

22

I Almost Do

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

Stay Stay Stay

The Last Time

Holy Ground

Sad Beautiful Tragic

The Lucky One

Everything Has Changed

Starlight

Begin Again

The Moment I Knew

Come Back… Be here

Girl At Home

Better Man

Nothing New

Babe

Message In A Bottle

I Bet You Think About Me

Run

The Very First Night

All Too Well (10 minute version)

Welcome To New York

Blank Space

Style

Out Of The Woods

All You Had To Do Was Stay

Shake It Off

I Wish You Would

Bad Blood

Wildest Dreams

How You Get The Girl

This Love

I Know Places

Clean

Wonderland

You Are In Love

New Romantics

“Slut!”

Say Don’t Go

Now That We Don’t Talk

Suburban Legends

Is It Over Now?

…Ready For It?

Endgame

I Did Something Bad

Don’t Blame Me

Delicate

Look What You Made Me Do

So It Goes

Gorgeous

Getaway Car

King Of My Heart

Dancing With Our Hands Tied

Dress

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Call It What You Want

New Years Day

MORE TBA!

I Forgot That You Existed

Cruel Summer

Lover

The Man

The Archer

I Think He Knows

Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince

Paper Rings

Cornelia Street

Death By A Thousand Cuts

London Boy

False God

You Need To Calm Down

Afterglow

ME!

It’s Nice To Have A Friend

Daylight

The 1

Cardigan

The Last Great American Dynasty

Exile

My Tears Ricochet

Mirrorball

Seven

August

This Is Me Trying

Illicit Affairs

Invisible String

Mad Woman

Betty

Peace

Hoax

The Lakes

Willow

Champagne Problems

Gold Rush

Tis The Damn Season

Tolerate It

No Body, No Crime

Happiness

Dorothea

Coney Island

Ivy

Cowboy Like Me

Long Story Short

Closure

Evermore

Right Where You Left Me

It’s Time To Go

Lavender Haze

Maroon

Anti-Hero

Snow On The Beach

You’re On Your Own, Kid

Midnight Rain

Question..?

Vigilante Shit

Bejeweled

Labyrinth

Karma

Sweet Nothing

Mastermind

The Great War

Paris

High Infidelity

Glitch

Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve

Dear Reader

Hits Different

You’re Losing Me

[gertlushgaming]

Building Better Worlds Announced for ALIEN RPG

“Space is a pitch-black room—stick your hand out and you might never get it back. Of course, you also might touch God. It’s a gamble either way. To not try, however, is to wither and die—only those bold and foolish enough to take a chance will change their lives.” — Captain J.V. Gorham, Far Spinward Colonies, Pioneer, Weyland Corp. Dark mysteries wait to be unearthed. Free League Publishing and 20th Century Studios Building Better Worlds Announced the ALIEN RPG, a new expansion for the multiple award-winning ALIEN The Roleplaying Game. The expansion is now available for pre-order on the webpage.

All the wonder and danger of the stars is yours—if you can just wipe the grime off your face and dig the dirt out from under your fingernails first. Related Post: Alekon Review (Nintendo Switch OLED) Airless moons circle swirling gas giants, eager to be transformed into tomorrow’s paradise. Dark ancient mysteries wait to be unearthed beneath a millennium of debris. Searing solar flares boil your flesh and blacken your bones as you harness their power to light a hundred worlds. Long-lost mysteries lie entombed in the frozen hearts of icy comets. Unstable tectonic plates shift to drown iridium mines in scalding lava.

Even the truth of humanity's origins awaits you out there, orbiting some dying star. And out there amongst it all is something truly horrifying—something that nature never intended. Something alien.

Find out more about ALIEN RPG: Building Better Worlds ALIEN RPG: Building Better Worlds is a complete campaign module, giving you all the tools needed to run a full open-world campaign as a pioneering explorer or colonist.

ALIEN RPG: Building Better Worlds expansion contains: ● History of Colonization – the story of humanity’s reach for the stars. ● Creating Explorers & Colonists – expanded character creation rules for life on the frontier. ● Gear & Ships – an extensive chapter with new gear and spaceships, gloriously illustrated. ● Extrasolar Species Catalog – new Xenomorphic creatures to encounter. ● The Lost Worlds – the framework and backstory for a frontier campaign. ● Expeditions – six thrilling expeditions into uncharted space, playable in any order. ● The Endgame – the final showdown with everything at stake.

PLEASE NOTE: The ALIEN RPG core rulebook is required to play Building Better Worlds.

Read the full article

[venomremmy777]

They are people STILL commenting on that one post so let me make something clear-

I AM A MULTISHIPPER WHO SHIPS BOTH CANON AND FANON SHIPS AND KNOW THAT ONE SHIP BEING CANON DOESNT STOP PEOPLE FROM SHIPPING OTHER THINGS AND I KNOW ITS NOT SERIOUS BUT I WAS TIRED OF PEOPLE TAKING EVERY SMALL DETAIL AND SERIOUSLY DECLARING IT CANON- YES I KNOW SHIPPERS GET CRUMBS AND SAY ITS CANON FOR FUN, BUT IM TALKING ABOUT IF TWO CHARACTERS GET AN ARC OR RESPECT EACH OTHER, ESPECIALLY THE STRAIGHT SHIPS, THEY AUTOMATICALLY THINK THEY HAVE A HIGHER CHANCE OF BEING ENDGAME BECAUSE OF HETERONORMATIVITY. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS THAT I WAS NOT MAKING FUN OF PEOPLE FOR ENJOYING SHIPS, I WAS POINTING OUT THE FACT SOME PEOPLE THINK THEYRE SHIPS ARE SUPERIOR TO OTHERS IN CANON FROM THE STUPIDEST THINGS THAT CAN BE SEEN AS BOTH PLATONIC AND ROMANTIC- SOME PEOPLE NOT ALL

[sparklesandmarvel]

I'm reposting this because I don't want it getting swallowed up by the length of the post but some of y'all need to get a grip. I had to respond to the person who had som foolishness to say about my post, so to recap:

@ribbonsflyingoutthewindow

All you did was show how ignorant and tone deaf you are. You make several arguments that fall flat for several reasons and are just laughable.

Firstly, I cannot believe Black have to keep saying this, we do not care if you have Black "friends", that is irrelevant to the argument and you can have Black "friends" and still be racist. Saying this actually leads me to believe that you are because why are you throwing around these relationships like you collected tokens you want to cash in? It’s like you are using your “friends” as a veil to poorly hide your racism.

2. My whole post is about the racist reaction to Sam being Captain America and how Bucky wouldn't have been treated like this had he been chosen. Trying to center yourself and your thoughts and opinions about how not racist it is to have a preference is not appropriate.

I literally said "People constantly inserting their opinion "Bucky would've been better," for no actual reason." Referring to the people who say this and give no actual reasons as to why Bucky would be better. At the end of the day people will have preferences and that's fine, but as far as the Captain America preferences go they seem to only prefer white Captains whether they want to admit it or not.

And honestly there is no reason to not want Sam to be Captain America. There isn't. There is not one valid reason. It happened in the comics and Sam was able to do the job just fine, Sam Wilson in the MCU is smart, caring, tough and more than capable of doing the job with or without super soldier serum.

When you said "If you want strictly my opinion (which you don't, but it's the only one you think I'm qualified to give), here it is. Marvel chose Sam to pander to an audience when they could have chosen Bucky and made a statement." This statement proves:

YOU ARE RACIST

Anytime a Black person is chosen for a popular and important role the company is “pandering to an "audience". This is a racist argument and I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It’s racist and spoken by racist people. The fact that you think the only reason why Sam was chosen is to be a token Black man to pander to an audience shows exactly what you think of Black people and how much you value them. If you even watched one episode of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier you’d know just a little bit about why it is such a big deal that Sam is taking over the mantle of Captain America. I’m not explaining it to you because you seem like the type to not care and still push a ridiculous narrative. But I will say considering the history of racism in America that is still prevalent to this day, Sam becoming Captain America is a big deal and does make a statement, it’s just that a lot of white people don’t try to relate to characters and backstories that don’t look like them or remind them of their own.

To address Bucky: I think there is nothing wrong with him getting his mental health together before taking on a role as stressful as Captain America, and where his character was left after Infinity War and Endgame he wasn’t really in a position mentally to take on the role. I don’t like how the Russos acted like he was too damaged to take on the role at some point but Bucky in the comics and in the MCU doesn’t want the role. Him wanting to be Captain America is inconsistent with his character. 

Now this is where the part of your argument gets really funny: 

“And this is really big for me because it has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with origin. Anthony Mackie was born in America. Sebastian Stan came here from Romania after Communism had destroyed so much of their homeland. So this was Marvel's ONE CHANCE to put the shield in the hands of an immigrant. It doesn't matter if an immigrant plays any other role, but to let them play Captain America? That makes such a strong statement it brings tears to my eyes to think about. Marvel has other Black superheroes. There isn't another chance to make an immigrant the face of America.”

You think A WHITE MAN is the BEST choice of an immigrant taking over the role of Captain America? His character isn’t even an immigrant so what the hell would that do? “Marvel has other Black superheroes” How dismissive of the importance and value of Black superheroes. The more you explain yourself the more racist you sound. You don’t need to walk around using the n-word to be racist. There are and will be plenty of chances for an immigrant to take on the role of Captain America, right now it’s going to be a Black man and if you can’t see the significance of that in a country that has and still actively treat Black Americans like trash, then you need to revisit history class and talk to those “Black friends” of yours.

If you really aren’t racist, you need to do some self reflection. Your response shows how dismissive you are of Black characters and their importance. Being more offended at being called racist than actual racism is a problem and detracts from solving the actual problem.